


Souls Entwined

by IvoryRaven



Series: Works In Progress [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Harry Potter's Name is Hadrian, He goes by Harry though, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Male pregnancy that works, Mpreg, Mpreg Harry, No Beta, Possessive Tom Riddle, Pureblood Culture (Harry Potter), Pureblood Politics (Harry Potter), Pureblood Society (Harry Potter), Riddle at Hogwarts Era, Sane Tom Riddle, Slytherin Common Room, Slytherin Harry Potter, Slytherin Politics, Slytherins Being Slytherins, Soul Bond, Soulmates, Teen Pregnancy, Tom Riddle is Not Voldemort, Top Tom Riddle, We Die Like Men, well kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:35:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 40,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23256286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IvoryRaven/pseuds/IvoryRaven
Summary: When Hadrian "Harry" Potter starts attending Hogwarts for his seventh year, everything changes.Thrown into an established Slytherin hierarchy, Harry would have faded into the background, an anonymous face among hundreds, if it weren't for that sex he'd had with Tom Riddle on the Express.And, of course, the resulting baby.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Series: Works In Progress [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2111985
Comments: 125
Kudos: 1046





	1. The First Shenanigans

Hadrian Potter arrived at Platform Nine and Three Quarters with a snake around his neck and his fingers curled around a shrunken trunk. He wore a set of form fitting robes and polished dragon-hide boots that should have clacked against the concrete, but didn’t. He glided through the crowds on silent feet, piercing emerald eyes fixed ahead of him.

The scorned Potter spawn had emerged.

Hadrian got onto the train and strode to an empty carriage, head held high, before pulling the door shut behind him, blasting it with the strongest locking magic he knew, and collapsing onto the seat. Hogwarts was going to be a nightmare, he just knew it. 6 years’ apprenticeship with Gellert Grindelwald and the old bastard decided it would do him some good to be around young wixen his age.

Not that they were of his caliber, of course. Hadrian was brilliant and he knew it. Also, he’d miss Grindelwald’s excellent cooking - especially treacle tarts. Mmm, treacle tarts. Just the thought made his mouth water. He’d have to make some when he got into his dorm room - dorm room, who puts Grindelwald’s apprentice in a dorm room?

The door opened.

Hadrian leaped to his feet, wand out. That door had been enchanted against unwanted intruders, it shouldn’t have let just anyone in!

“Hello,” said the intruder. “You must be Lord Potter. I’m Tom Riddle, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Hadrian looked this Tom Riddle up and down. Now, his mouth was watering for an entirely different reason. “Hello, Riddle. The pleasure is mine.” His eyes lingered slightly on Riddle’s groin. “Now, will you tell me how you got into this compartment?”

Riddle’s lip twitched. “I opened the door.”

“You can’t just have opened the door!” Hadrian objected. “It was keyed to me. Anyone with capability to harm me - all sixth years and above - and I put an age line! You can’t have just opened the door and walked in!”

Riddle had begun looking at him in a most peculiar way. “Hadrian.” he said, and for some reason Hadrian didn’t object to his use of his first name, “there are only two plausible explanations.”

“That you somehow got through my magic? Yeah, right.”

Riddle ignored that interjection. “One, that you inserted a part of your soul into my body, which, while theoretically possible has never been tested and would likely cause irreversible harm -”

“Which I have not done,” said Hadrian.

“Or that you are I are - well. Soulmates,” Riddle finished awkwardly.

“Soulmates?”

“Come on. What are you, a Mudblood?” the sneer suited the sharp-cheeked Slytherin more than the uncomfortable smile from before.

Hadrian fought back a blush. “I’ve just - never heard that before.”

Riddle’s eyes glinted as they roved over the other’s rose-dusted cheeks. “Oh, haven’t you?”

Hadrian crossed his arms petulantly. “You treat me like - an ordinary student!” he whined.

“And that isn’t what you are?”

“It’s not!” insisted Hadrian.

Riddle stepped closer, towering over Hadrian. “I see,” he practically purred. Hadrian gulped, feeling the air hang heavy between them.

All of a sudden Riddle’s hand was on his chin.

Riddle’s hand was on his chin.

Riddle’s hand was on his chin.

Hadrian, Grindelwald’s apprentice, Lord of the Noble House of Potter, squeaked.

Riddle pulled Hadrian’s face up. For such a sudden action it was awfully sudden, and Hadrian felt blood rushing to his face.

Riddle blinked once, eyes going slightly hazy. “Hadrian,” he murmured, leaning even closer, and Hadrian swallowed thickly. 

“Please,” he whispered, and if he hadn’t been so quiet he was sure his voice would have been embarrassingly high pitched, “call me Harry.”

“Harry, hmm?” said Riddle. “Interesting… then I suppose you must call me Tom.”

Harry licked his lips, which were suddenly awfully dry. Then, that was probably because the taller boy - or where they men? - was breathing on them.

“Say, Harry,” murmured Riddle - Tom, he was Tom - “you know there’s a saying… and you know what comes between Tom and Harry?”

Harry looked into Tom’s silver eyes. “Huh?”

“Tom,” said Tom, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, his plump, soft-looking mouth, “Tom, Dick, and Harry.”

Harry let out a yell. “Merlin, Tom! Must you?”

The Slytherin peered down at him. “Do you feel it too?”

And Harry did, so he reached up and claimed Tom’s lips for his own. Tom eagerly responded, his tongue making its way with surprising efficiency into Harry’s mouth and - 

Harry melted right there. “Tom,” he moaned. “How?”

Tom’s left arm wound its way around Harry’s body as his right fumbled for his wand and shot a privacy spell at the door. “Testing a hypothesis,” he managed before Harry was on him again, hungry for more.

Harry’s hands pressed between them, reaching out for, then grasping, the buttons holding Tom’s robes together. He fiddled with them, plucking buttons out one by one, letting the fabric fall to the side, and Tom didn’t stop him. He just kept kissing the living daylights out of Harry. 

Harry slipped Tom’s outer robe off his shoulders. The crisp, starched fabric of the Slytherin’s shirt was smooth against his hands as they reached lower. 

“Harry,” Tom finally broke away, and as soon as he did Harry was kneeling and tugging on the zipper, “Harry are you sure -”

Harry gave an experimental lick, and Tom shut right up. “Hush,” purred Harry. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Often?” Tom asked, breathing hard and jerkily as Harry went in again. 

“I’d rather not talk about it,” said Harry coldly, and that - well, Tom was now as hard as Harry’s voice had been.

Harry latched on, and his tongue circled Tom’s end. The taller gasped, leaning against the wall for support. If it couldn’t get any more intense, Harry opened his mouth wider and wrapped his lips around the length of Tom’s cock. 

The green-eyed boy brought his hands up, squeezing Tom’s balls, before he rocked forward and went back to rythmic strokes of the length.

“Harry,” Tom was breathless.

Harry looked up and smiled. Then he stopped and pulled off, still looking up at Tom with a glint in his emerald eyes. 

“Shall we?” asked Tom, but it was unneccessary. Harry was already stripping.

Tom reached out and pulled the shorter boy toward him, hands on each side of his head, trapping him against the wall. Harry felt himself flushing as Tom helped him with the last of his clothes, sliding his boxers down.

“Nice arse,” said Tom, and Harry couldn’t stop the surprised laugh that bubbled up.

Tom captured Harry’s mouth in a kiss, hot and heavy. His hands roamed the other, finding - “Ahh, yes,” said Tom, as Harry let out a pleasure-crazed hiss. Tom spun Harry around, his hands now over the shorter’s stomach, where a pool of what would be pleasure lay, and brought his right hand back down, finding what he was looking for. In response, Harry hissed again.

Tom worked around Harry’s rim, pausing only to lick his finger to speed the process along. Harry’s arsehole opened right up like a morningflower at dawn. Tom inserted his cock, gasping as he felt the wet hole ready for him. All his work, of course, and that only carried him higher to euphoria. Oh, what he could do to the other’s body! He gave a few thrusts, soliciting a pleasured moan. 

Harry whimpered in need, and that along was enough to push Tom over the edge. The sensation of warm fluid filling his hole overwhelmed Harry. He let out yet another moan as the pent-up tension released in a sudden burst. The two stumbled onto the compartment’s bench as a sex-powered haze overcame them. 

“Damn, Harry,” said Tom. “You’re good with that tongue.”

Harry sighed. “Mmhmm, and you, mmm.” He rested a hand on his stomach. “That was rough, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”

Tom shifted to rest Harry’s head on his shoulder. “You’re warm,” he said.

Harry turned to face him. “Maybe next time a little softer?” his eyes were pained. Tom’s cock, ever eager, gave an enthusiastic twitch at the undeniably sexy sight. He just smiled.

The train soon ground to a halt. “Hogsmeade Station!” came the shouts. “Everybody off!”

“Oh Merlin,” muttered Tom, jumping up, knocking Harry to the ground. “We must’ve missed the warning to get dressed…”

Harry was staring at him. “Ouch,” he said pointedly. 

Tom blinked. “Oh. Sorry.”

Harry sighed. “After the amazing blowjob I gave you that’s all you can say? You shoved me into the floor!”

“The Pureblood thing, that act you had earlier - that’s all it is, isn’t it? An act,” said Tom. Harry glared, but his eyes soon softened. “Yes. And I don’t - I don’t want to talk about it.”

Tom slid back into his pants, then shoved his shirt over his head and pulled his robes on. Harry, sitting cross-legged on the bench, watched pensively. “You seem to know what you’re doing. Do you have sex often when you’re in a rush?”

Tom choked. “You minx!”

Harry shrugged and tugged his own boxers back on, giving his arse one last shake in Tom’s direction before pulling up his pants.

Tom having spelled himself into looking neat as ever, Harry disheveled and with just-shagged hair, were some of the last few students out of the Hogwarts Express. Harry eyed the line of first-years going for what looked like boats and opted to go with Tom to the carriages. They, he was sure, would arrive faster, and had much lower odds of tipping him into a freezing Scotland lake.

Tom was making a beeline for a particular carriage with a huddle of tall seventh-years. Harry strode behind him, and then, seeing the neatness of them all, muttered a few handy spells of ‘looking good in a duel’ Grindelwald had taught him to reinvent the smooth, elegant appearence he had had earlier in the day.

“This is Lord Potter,” said Tom when they stepped into the carriage, then he offered Harry a hand. Harry took it, and the other seventh-years stared. Neither boy let anything on. Eventually, a pale-skinned blonde reached out a hand to shake. “Heir Abraxas Malfoy,” he introduced himself. “Lovely to make your acquaintence, Lord Potter.”

“Likewise,” Harry murmured, shaking Malfoy’s hand.

The others soon did the same. A pair of muscular boys were Heirs Crabbe and Goyle, a boy with dark hair and deep almond eyes was Heir Lestrange, a fair-skinned boy with hair almost as dark as Harry’s own was Heir Black. “My sisters and cousins will be delighted to meet you,” he told Harry excitedly. “I do believe we are related!”

Harry nodded. “Through Nigellus Phineas Black, yes. And your cousin is engaged to my cousin Charlus.”

Heir Black nodded. “Ah, yes, the former Heir Primary Presumptive Potter.”

Harry gave a wry grin. “That’s the one.”

Tom sat down. Just as he did, the carriage began to move, quite abruptly. If Harry hadn’t seen the Thestrals’ ghostly forms he would have been as surprised as Heir Black, who yelped and fell on his behind.

“Orion!” exclaimed a boy with Heir Black’s dark curls and porcelain skin. The boy to his left nodded solemnly.

“You mustn’t embarrass the Ancient and Noble family, Orion.”

“Oh, Ignatius, you!” said Orion passionately as his bottom thudded along the floor. (Honestly, why that crackpot Dippet didn’t use a basic Smoothing Charm, Harry had no clue.) “You aren’t even a Black!”

“I’d say that significantly lowers his chances ‘Cretia’ll say yes when he proposes,” sniggered another boy.

“Montgomery!” groaned Heir Crabbe. The first looked unpurturbed. 

Harry’s lip curled. The Blacks had no small reputation of intermarrying, although in practice they kept their blood fresh enough to not reduce the magical potential of their offspring, although dominated with enough traditional traits that each Black was clearly recognizable. The pale skin, the dark curls, the refined chin, the combination was unmistakable.

The notion of Lucretia Black marrying Ignatius Prewett was new, though. Harry had missed a lot during his winters in Austria. Grindelwald liked him to be focused on his studies, and not the ‘hocus-pocus those pretentious fools are up to.’

“Come on,” said the Black who wasn’t Orion, “why focus on us when we’ve a Potter here?”

“Ah yes, a Potter. How many wives are you planning?” smirked Goyle.

“Oi, you don’t know he swings that way,” Montgomery said, waggling his eyebrows. “His mother was a Rosier.”

Goyle nodded sagely. “That may just override the Potter genes.”

Harry smiled, deciding to play along. “I have my mother’s eyes,” he said.

Montgomery caught on first and grinned at Harry. “Quite the line you come from, then?”

The Potter scion scoffed. “Don’t even think about it. I’m already promised.”

The other boy’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“No. Merlin, no! I just said that to see if you’d honestly fall for it.”

Tom coughed lightly. “If you lovebirds hadn’t noticed, we’ve arrived.”

“Oh, so we have!” exclaimed Orion, grasping his trunk and speeding out of the carriage at slightly over the acceptable speed for the Heir of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black. The other Black boy shook his head and sighed, but followed behind his future Lord. 

The others soon followed. Tom hung back with Harry, and together they joined the end of the herd of students heading towards the great oak doors. 

“So,” said Tom, “I think I’ve proved my hypothesis.”

Harry looked at him and frowned. “What?”

Tom’s lip quirked. “We’re not speaking aloud.”

Harry stopped. “Wait, what!”

Tom put his hand on the shorter’s arm. “Harry,” he said and this time Harry could tell his mouth wasn’t moving, “we’ve consummated the bond.”

“Consummated what ‘bond?”

“The soulmate bond. The one that enables us to do this.”

Harry froze. “That’s a thing?” he breathed.

“Well,” chuckled the tall Slytherin, “it would seem so. I’ll have to research it but we shouldn’t have any complications. Get sorted into Slytherin so I have access to you.”

“What!” said Harry for the third time in as many minutes. “I’m not throwing my sorting just for you!”

“What’s a sorting anyway,” muttered Tom, “doesn’t make you a real Slytherin.”

“The fuck do you mean!”

“Let’s just say I’ll be headed to Gringotts to pick up a consort ring for you.”

Harry stared at him in silence, then whirled to face the castle and ran for it. He could feel eyes prickling against his back, and chose to ignore it. The bastard Slytherin could watch all he wanted, but if he thought one hookup a husband made, he was wrong. 

And Harry hadn’t exactly been lying to Montgomery, not exactly anyway, when he said he was already promised. Grindelwald strongly disapproved of the idea of his prized apprentice marrying. Said it would compromise his morals, as if that were a focal point for the Dark wizard.

He stopped running when he reached the middle of the crowd, and marched with muscles clenched tight through the mud towards the oak doors of Hogwarts Castle. The castle was a stunning sight even from the midst of a crowd of mostly taller teenagers, with a brightly shining moon hanging over a turret and casting fascinating shadows across the entire building. It was breathtaking. Even the splash of a few first-years tipping their boat and plopping into the lake like frogs off a log couldn’t get him to tear his eyes away. It was good, he supposed, that Durmstrang had refused him on the grounds that he had a connection with Grindelwald, and Beaubatons only accepted French students. Rumours of the Dark wizard’s apprentice hadn’t reached Britain yet.

Hogwarts barely lost any of its appeal when hundreds of teenagers trampled mud into its stone halls. A looping cleaning charm, fueled by the magic channels a place like this must have with so many wixen throughout the ages would not be very hard. At all. And yet, the castle let itself get filthy with bootprints. How degrading.

The students entered what must be the Great Hall he’d heard whispers of, with its arching, enchanted ceiling and long tables. There was a dais, too. He headed there, head held high.

He presented himself before the man he knew to be Headmaster Armando Dippet. “Lord Hadrian Potter, sir,” he said. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance at last.”

“Mr. Potter!” Dippet seemed both delighted and unaware of the snub that was Harry not offering his hand to shake. “Welcome to Hogwarts! Now, if you don’t mind, we’ll sort you beore the First Years, then proceed with the feast as normal. You received the supply list that was sent when you enrolled, I trust? Jolly good!” he continued without waiting for a response. “I am glad. Well, off you pop to the side just there, and I’ll see you in a moment for your sorting!”

Harry nodded. “I do understand, sir. I’ll just be over there.” He strode to the side of the room the Headmaster had indicated, turning to face the dais.

After all the other students were settled, and the First Years were an anxious clump on the other side of the Hall, Dippet stepped forward to a podium. “Good evening!” his voice boomed, magically amplified by a spell Harry hadn’t noticed. His reflexes were down - he hoped it wasn’t the sex. He’d hate to have to give that up for his battle ability.

“Good to see you all! Yes, welcome, welcome! And a special welcome to our transfer student this year! I’m happy to introduce your new classmate, Seventh Year Hadrian Potter! Mr. Potter, please come up and be Sorted into your new House. Albus?”

Harry glanced at Albus Dumbledore as he stepped forward. He recognized him from the atlatl targets Grindelwald used. The man looked older, and his fashion sense had got worse, but had the same auburn hair and long beard.

Dumbledore held a tattered old hat, and, when Harry reached the middle of the dais, placed it on his head. 

Good grief, I did not need to see that! Exclaimed the hat almost immediately in Harry’s head. It seemed much more intrusive than Tom’s presence had been earlier. Young Riddle, then? Well! It’s not every day an old hat is surprised so.

Get on with it, please.

I see the glow’s worn off. Oh, very well then, if you insist. I see talent, yes, trained by Albus’ old fling. Didn’t know that? Ah, yes, quite a long story, no time for it now if there’s no time for a little entertainment. Courage, lots of it, quite enough to put you firmly in Gryffindor. And clever, a bit headstrong. Scratch that, very impulsive. I see. Not Hufflepuff, then, your ambition is all for you. Bloody hell, that Riddle’s enormous! You must have a good pain tolerance. That’d suit a Gryffindor well. You’d manage in Ravenclaw, but really there’s no point putting you there now, is there? Maybe six years ago, but people change. You’d get no benefit from it. It’s Gryffindor or Slytherin, and I’ve survived this long. I think if I just do this… an old hat does need something to think about! SLYTHERIN!

Harry’s robes gained green trim, and his tie turned green and silver. He strode off the dais to the table with the serpent hanging over it, his own snake in his pocket, hissing slightly. He was going to take the nearest empty seat, but Orion Black was beckoning. He sighed and changed course. Orion scooted over. 

There was a clear hierarchy on the Slytherin table. At the center, like a spider crouching in the middle of its web, was Tom Riddle. He had surrounded himself with the spawn of influential families with features Harry sort of recognized. Montgomery from the carriage was there, Crabbe and Goyle lurked nearby, although they were excluded from the inner circle itself, his cousins Druella and Cassius Rosier steadfastly ignoring each other, a blonde boy, and a horde of Blacks, which included Orion, and, unfortunately by proxy, Harry.

Smug-looking Slytherins with less well-known pedigrees were seated in the middle band. Future influential wixen from other Houses seemed to be included in this category, too. Ignatius Prewett, a Ravenclaw, and Harfang Longbottom, a Hufflepuff, were leaning forward to talk to a couple of the Black girls. Cygnus was allowing it, so Harry concluded this must be acceptable to the former Primary Heir Presumptive Black. Cygnus, like Harry’s own cousin Charlus, had never quite gotten over the birth of a more eligible heir. Unlike Charlus, Cygnus had used that resentment to drive his own ambition and pride in his family House.

“Cousin Hadrian.”

Speak of the devil. Harry turned to see his cousin looking down on him. Charlus was almost a whole year older, having been born in September the year before Harry. He forced his face to warp into a polite smile. “Cousin Charlus.” He held his chin up. To give even the slightest hint of a bow to Charlus before the older Potter bowed to him would undermine his entire being as Primary Heir Apparent. He couldn’t be displaced from his position but by his death - but his birth had knocked Charlus down in the order of succession. Charlus’ father had encouraged his son’s bitterness. Uncle Phineas Potter, who had always been destined to inherit nothing but a sum of money, a few fine houses, and the right to use the family name - nothing to scoff at, but for the Potters, a family descended from the great wizards of lore, it was barely a crumb off a princely table.

Harry’s seat at their particular princely table was the throne.

Charlus finally caved and gave a sniff bob of his head. Harry’s own nod was three times as elegant just to spite the younger family branch, but his expression was cold when he looked back up. 

“It’s wonderful to finally see you pursuing your more academic… talents,” said Charlus.

“I’m sure my presence will be a boon to those less academically inclined than I,” Harry smiled.

Charlus blinked. “Certainly it will be, little cousin.”

Almost in the blink of an eye, Druella Rosier appeared by Harry’s side. “Charlus!” she said with a bright smile, reaching out and setting her hand on his arm. “How lovely to see you again! Why, since the Vernal Gala I don’t think I’ve encountered you once! Goodness, how did it slip my mind? If you’ve any time later on, I would like to discuss certain matters with you concerning my young sister…”

Charlus narrowed his eyes at Harry. “I’m a bit busy at the moment,” he bit out.

“Oh, I completely understand!” simpered Druella. “I’ll catch you later, then? Goodbye!” She waved merrily, then turned to Harry. Her expression changed from the upbeat fool to something very, well, Druella. “Hadrian. You should have ignored him.” Then she walked off.

Cassius sniggered. “Druella got to you?”

Hadrian groaned. “Yup.” He popped the p.

“Druella’s not one to beat around the bush,” conceded one of the girls in the clump of Blacks.

“Walburga’s too nice to Druella,” said Cassius. Walburga, the Black girl, huffed. 

“She needs some kindness in her life.”

Students were beginning to stand up and leave in groups. Hadrian made a move to do the same, but Tom stopped him with a look. “What?” he demanded.

“Slytherins leave together,” Orion explained. “We all come down to breakfast together, we all go to the dorms together.”

Ah yes. The dorms. Hadrian did not want to sleep in a dorm. He looked around the table, wondering who he would end up with. There was the clump of Blacks, Crabbe and Goyle, Montgomery Lestrange, Cassius Rosier… and of course Tom Riddle.

“All right,” said Tom, and stood up. The rest of the Slytherins rose as well. First Tom began walking toward the exit Harry presumed to be the one leading to the Slytherin common room and dorms, then the blonde boy and Cygnus Black followed him. Then Walburga Black and Druella Rosier - their hands brushing together, Druella’s fingers fluttering towards Walburga’s, which remained stubbornly still. But Walburga didn’t move her hand. By then, the rest of the table had converged into a mass, and certain people moved to the outside. Older students surrounded the younger First Years, Second Years, and Third Years, with Sixth and Seventh Years all around the edge of the snakelike procession, giving the distinct impression that they were all older. Harry joined the outer edge.

Portraits called out and waved, many, to their descendants. “You’re back!” called out Phineas Nigellus Black, former Headmaster. “Cygnus, Lucretia, Walburga, Cassiopeia, Orion! And is that Arcturus’ daughter I see? Ah, not you, Lucretia, darling, but - yes, it is! Young Cedrella! And you brought your sister, too! Callidora! Is this your first year?”

“No, Great Uncle, this is my second year of Hogwarts,” said one of the younger Blacks. “Honestly!”

“It seems just yesterday my lovely nephew Arcturus and his charming wife brought you to my portrait all wrapped up like a pie in pastry! How you’ve grown.”

“Yeah I have grown, and I’ll thank you to remember it!”

Phineas Nigellus scanned the group again. “Lucretia, you do look put out. How’s the little girl, hm? Meissa? Still crawling?”

“For Merlin’s sage, Great-Great Grandfather, she’s six!”

“And how is Ignatius?”

At hearing that, Montgomery Lestrange whistled. “Ooh la la, been telling Great-Great Grandfather all about what goes on between the sheets, are we, ‘Cretia?”

Lucretia flushed. “Nothing is going on in the bedroom between Ignatius and I, if that’s what you mean, Montgomery! And why thank you, Great-Great Grandfather, for asking. He is doing perfectly well.”

“I am glad, I am glad! You be sure to bring one of my portraits to the ceremony now, hm? And I’ll want to see the future Heir Presumptive.” Here he looked at Orion. “How goes your gallant quest for a girlfriend?”

It was Orion’s turn to blush beetroot-red. “Oh, stopit! I haven’t got a girlfriend or a boyfriend, not that I’d want one but it would be okay if I did!”

Phineas Nigellus just looked amused. This time, he let the procession of Slytherins move onwards. 

“That was my Great-Great Grandfather.” said Orion. “He’s a bit nosy.”

“I heard that!” came a call.

“Sorry!” yelled Orion over his shoulder, then whispered to Harry, “not sorry.”

The group shuffled through the doors into a vast chamber, with black leather sofas and armchairs, a cozily cracklng fire, and a collection of fine green rugs. There were paintings on the walls, and a mantlepiece above the fireplace with the image of a serpent’s head. The whole room was doused in cool green light, and when he looked to find the source he found it was because the ceiling slanted, and one of those slants was an enourmous window that encompassed most of the wall it was connected to. The veiw was of the Great Lake. A few merfolk waited near the edge, and waved to greet their human friends. They seemed to be signing to specific people.

Tom was gathering First Years to the fireplace, where he stood with Abraxas Malfoy and Cygnus Black flanking him. “Welcome to Slytherin,” he said. “House of the cunning and ambitious. House of leaders and innovators. People who are not afraid to escape the bounds of common sense with logic. People to whom ‘should’ can always be replaced by ‘could.’ People who will mould our future with their bare hands. Slytherin House? We are the future.”

Abraxas nodded. “We are the future!” he repeated, and Cygnus led the audience in another repetition.

“We are the future! We are the future!”

“Slytherin!”

Tom smiled, letting the chant die down. “Welcome to Slytherin House. Now, Professor Slughorn, our Head of House.”

Slughorn slung his arm around Tom’s shoulders. “Thank you, Tom! Now, if I could have your attention please? Ah, yes. In Slytherin House we don’t have curfews like other Houses do. We like to leave that responsibility on your shoulders, in the hopes that you will begin to master it and use it to improve yourself. You are not here to be coddled. You are here to learn, as comfortable as learning may be, if you wish to excel, you will have to try. Those who excel will be rewarded. You will come to learn that I am a great believer in rewarding the worthy. Now I leave you to your own devices - sensible, please, but if you aren’t I am not one to notice.”

The First Years looked quite relieved at that.

When Slughorn left, Tom approached Harry. “Let me help you settle in,” he said, and Harry nodded. 

“Appreciate it.”

Tom led Harry up several curving flights of stairs. Harry stared. “Some expanding charms they’ve got,” he commented, and Tom nodded.

“Yeah. About what I mentioned earlier, I’m going to be looking into it, so if - would you like to know what I find out?”

Harry stopped him. “Yes! It concerns me just as much as you. I do want to know.”

Tom nodded again. “Okay, I can do that. As soon as I have something substantial, I’ll let you know. In private. This isn’t something we want everyone and their third-cousin twice removed knowing.”

Harry chuckled. “Not into expeditionism?”

Tom shook his head. “Me? No. I - just so you know I’m normally more restrained than that! I don’t just jump people. I don’t. That’s one of the things I want to find out, actually.”

Harry sighed. “Me either. It was weird, like I wasn’t entirely all there? Or, I think… I was, but there was something else there, too.”

Tom blinked. “Odd. I felt the same way. That ought to be in my notes.”

Harry nodded. “Let us proceed?”

Tom kept walking up another flight of stairs, stopping at the second door in. “Here we are! Your new dorm.”

The shorter boy inspected the door. It had a carved plaque: 

Slytherin 7th years

Montgomery Lestrange

Abraxas Malfoy

Archibald Yaxley

Tom Riddle

Balthazar Crouch

Cygnus Black

Hadrian Potter

“Clever. It knows me.”

Tom nodded. “The castle’s magic.”

When he went in, his trunk was by the side of the bed second-closest to the window. “The one next to mine,” Tom commented. Harry started unpacking. He had two pairs of pants, two shirts, and two sets of robes, his dragonhide boots, and an expandable pouch full of books. 

“Hogwarts Castle may claim to have a good library, and perhaps they do,” Grindelwald had said, “but they certainly won’t allow you access to it. Better take your own.”

Tom’s eyes widened. Harry followed his gaze to the expensive expandable pouch. “Oh. That? Don’t they have these in Britain?”

Tom licked his lips. “I imagine they do. I just… could never afford things like that until I reached my majority last year.” 

Harry swallowed. “Oh. I’m sorry, I hadn’t realized you weren’t… treated like a pureblood heir. I suppose I should have realized you aren’t.”

The words had barely left his mouth when Tom had him pinned against the wall, fists clenched around his wrists. “How dare you!” raged the taller Slytherin. “How dare you say I am not an heir? Not an heir of anything!”

“I thought you weren’t!”

“I am, Harry, I’m just as much an heir of a noble family as you! I am Slytherin’s heir, Harry - Salazar fucking Slytherin! I am Lord Slytherin: I, Tom Riddle, I, the notorious Slytherin mudblood I am not a mudblood! I am Slytherin’s flesh and blood, borne of magic, raised by myself, I am Slytherin’s own you will not question it.”

Harry’s world went black with a hollow thud.


	2. Meeting the Blacks

The world was hazy. Objects that should have been still flowed like water. Harry’s head throbbed, a steady boom boom boom in an ever-changing landscape of messy color. 

“I see you’re up, Lord Potter.” came a voice from a blurry figure.

“Where am I?” mumbled Harry.

“The hospital wing,” said the figure, whose colors were condensing into black and white and brown.

Harry blinked in an effort to try and clear his vision. “I’m… at Hogwarts?”

“Yes, that’s right. Mr. Riddle here said that when he was taking you up to your dorm room you collapsed and started shaking. It was lucky he found you, your magic levels were dangerously low by the time he brought you here.”

Harry frowned. “Oh…”

He knew Tom was lying. The taller Slytherin had been furious, pinning Harry against the wall and screaming in his face, and Harry had - he felt his face flame. He had just passed out, like a terrified muggle in Grindelwald’s dungeon. The Dark wizard’s apprentice couldn’t just collapse like a stupid muggle!

A horrible thought occurred to him. Maybe that was why Grindelwald had sent him here, to Hogwarts, a perfectly ordinary school. Maybe he’d somehow known Harry was getting weaker. Maybe Harry wasn’t useful enough to keep around.

Maybe he ate too many treacle tarts for too little work?

There was a face then, peering down at him, looking somewhat familiar - dark hair, silver eyes, oh Merlin it was Tom. Harry’s vision was beginning to clear, and the cause of his current situation looked - well. Edible.

“I’m glad to see you awake,” said Tom, sounding nothing like he had the night of their last encounter. This time he was perfectly civil, with a ruffle of concern between his brows but not enough to make him seem obsessed. 

“It was very lucky Tom brought you here so quickly,” said the matron. Tom’s eyes sought Harry’s with some sort of desperate fire in them, a burning plea flickering in his irises.

“Um. Thank you, Tom?”

The fire faded into ash. Thank you, came Tom’s sleek, silvery voice in Harry’s head. Harry ignored it.

“Well, I’m glad to see the two of you getting along. I’ve potions to tend to, and a young Gryffindor needs his salves applying. I’ll be leaving you here - you are both seventeen, adults now, I hope I can trust you.” said the matron. Harry and Tom nodded.

“Righty-o!” she bustled out of the hospital wing.

As soon as the door shut behind her, Tom stepped toward Harry. “Harry, I -”

“I don’t want to hear it.” Harry hissed.

“Harry-” Tom tried, but Harry shook his head.

“No! Leave me alone!” Harry insisted.

“There are other-”

“Shut up!”

Tom did. He closed the door behind him, but no sooner as he did Orion Black was hurrying in. “Hadrian!” he exclaimed. “Oh, I was so worried! We all were, but only one visitor at a time, you know?”

“Worried? I’ve been here what, half a day?”

Orion smiled grimly. “Two, actually, two days. You’re lucky we get three to settle in before term starts. You wouldn’t want to miss the first day of classes.”

“But Orion, you barely know me.” Harry said.

Orion shrugged. “We Slytherins stick together. At school and beyond. You’re like a cousin to all of us now you’re here, even if we don’t know you well yet.”

“That’s sweet of you, Orion,” Harry said.

Orion grinned. “Most of us actually are cousins of some form anyway. It’s not too much of a stretch to include you.”

There was pounding at the door. “Orion! Come out already, let someone else go! Orion!”

Orion raised his eyebrows. “My absence is demanded,” he said. Harry snickered as Orion left the hospital wing.

Next to come in was Cygnus Black. “Did he manage to ask?” he demanded. Harry was confused.

“He didn’t ask me anything.”

Cygnus gave a heavy sigh. “I’ll be back,” he told Harry, and marched out of the door. True to his word, he soon returned, with Orion in tow. “Go on,” he told Orion.

Orion scuffed his feet. “Hadrian. I, Orion Arcturus Black, Primary Heir Apparent to the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black, offer you, Hadrian James Potter, Lord of the Ancient and Noble House of Potter, the official protection and allyship of the House of Black until the day may come that you or I, your benefactor, revokes that position.”

Grindelwald had taught Harry this. “I, Hadrian James Potter, Lord of the Ancient and Noble House of Potter, accept the official protection and allyship of the House of Black as granted to me by Orion Arcturus Black, Primary Heir Apparent to the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black, and acknowledge that this protection and allyship may be revoked only by myself or Orion Arcturus Black.”

They waited a moment in silence for the magical agreement to settle. When it had, Harry cracked a smile. “Call me Harry,” he said.

Orion beamed at him. “Then you must call me Orion!”

“And me, Cygnus,” added the older cousin. “Orion, now we really do have to go, in case the girls murder us for monopolizing Harry too long.”

When Cygnus and Orion left, Harry was expecting the Black girls to come in - but as they did, Montgomery Lestrange darted through the doorway.

“Hadrian!” he said. “You look so lonely in that bed. Care for some company?”

Harry stared. “...no. No thank you! I’m fine.”

Montgomery cocked his head. “Are you sure? ‘Cause I’m always willing to give a friend a hand, if y’know what I mean.”

Walburga Black, the oldest girl there, was starting to look rather flustered. “Montgomery, I don’t think he’s interested.”

Lucretia crossed her arms. With her dark curly hair held back by what looked like a band of wild roses, garnet studs in her ears, matching jeweled choker around her neck, and a glint in her eye she was certainly beautiful. There was a hint in the wildness of her roses and the look on her face that she was more than she seemed, a weapon-bearing Spartan, perhaps, raised among the thistles, or a Celtic warrior willing to die for her people.

“He isn’t interested,” she said boredly. “Go away, Montgomery Lestrange.”

Montgomery looked at her, with her jaw set and her eyes fierce, and shrugged. “Sure.” And he left.

“Orion did it, then, did he?” Walburga asked.

Harry nodded. “If you mean offered protection…”

“Yes,” Walburga confirmed. She leaned over and embraced him. “Welcome to the family!”

Harry cleared his throat. “Not to be rude or anything, but I don’t really know any of you. Could you, maybe… introduce us?”

Lucretia rolled her eyes at that. Walburga was pretending not to see, Harry could tell.

Walburga nodded. “Of course!” She set her hand on the shoulder of a small girl with paler hair than the rest. She had a line of tiny freckles across her nose. “This is Callidora, one of our younger cousins, a second year. She is the daughter of Arcturus and Lysandra Black.”

Harry knew there were three Arcturus Blacks currently living. One was elderly and rarely made public appearances, the second, the current Lord Black, Orion’s father, was an Acturus. His wife was someone else, starting with an M and with some tie to Grindelwald; Harry remembered the Dark wizard talking about her… Morag? Millicent? Madelyn? No, it had ended with an A… Marissa? Melania! Yes, Melania Black. She was a former McMillan and her brother followed Grindelwald. She had been identified as a possible future follower.

The third Arcturus, then, must be this Callidora’s father.

Walburga nodded to a girl taller than Callidora, with warm hazel eyes and chin-length hair a coffee-stained sepia. “This is Cedrella, Callidora’s older sister. She’s a fifth year.”

Harry dipped his head to Cedrella. She had shoulder-length chestnut hair and one chocolate coloured freckle on her cheek. She nodded back, and Harry wasn’t offended that her nod wasn’t deeper than his had been. As a Lord, and her only one of many heiresses in the line of succession, she should have been the more subservient, but this was Hogwarts. It wasn’t as though they were meeting at a high society gathering - that would be different. Very, very different.

Walburga turned to Lucretia. “This is Lucretia, Orion’s sister.” Lucretia gave a slow smile and looked at Harry through her eyelashes. She then dropped her gaze, chin still up, to run over her own breasts like syrup over pancakes. Certainly she was the kind of girl who had admirable cleavage - if you liked that kind of thing. Harry would have laughed out loud if he couldn’t tell how important this was to Walburga.

Finally, Walburga brought an older girl with smudgy charcoal eyes forward. “This is Cassiopeia. Her brother Pollux is getting married this summer to Irma Crabbe - she’s a seventh year - and you know her older sister Dorea, Charlus’ fiancee.”

Harry nodded. “Yes, I know Dorea.”

Dorea Black had been engaged to Charlus since they were ten. The two had been raised together under the impression that Frederick Potter, Harry’s father, had died childless, and thus his younger brother Henry Potter’s son, Charlus, was the future Lord Potter. Henry Potter had been Lord Potter until Harry’s seventeenth birthday, when magic restored the Lordship to the older family branch as per the 1547 Potter Familie Inheritance Code. When that happened and Henry Potter had realized he had lost his Lordship with its Wizengamot seats, prestige, and many properties along with his only son’s chance of inheriting the Potter Family Main Vaults and Ancestral Castle, he’d been furious. So had Lord Arcturus Black, and if it weren’t that Charlus’ and Dorea’s ‘love story’ had been so well documented in the papers and so enchanting to the public mind, Lord Black may well have rescinded his offer of Dorea’s hand.

Luckily for Henry Potter, who had really been the one who wanted his son to marry a Black Lady, the two had become a celebrity couple, appearing in The Daily Prophet, Witches’ Weekly, and Enchantress. Wixen had been anticipating Charlus’ and Dorea’s graduation from Hogwarts, assuming it was a sign that in the coming year the pair would tie the knot.

They really were public figures, and that was the only thread keeping Henry and Charlus Potter’s names out of the dirt.

Cedrella grasped Harry’s hand and squeezed, breaking the Potter Heir out of his musings. “Like Walburga said, welcome to the family.”

Harry smiled back. “Nice to meet all of you - Cedrella, Callidora, Lucretia, Cassiopeia.”

Callidora curtsied and held out her hand, fingers just tense enough that Harry could tell how careful she was being to do the right thing. He grasped her hand, and kissed it. “Lady Black,” he said. She looked up at Walburga with wide brown eyes, and her worried expression morphed into something of a smile when the older girl nodded her approval.

Walburga cast her eyes over her cousins, then turned back to Harry. “We should go,” she said. “Do feel better soon.”

“Thank you,” said Harry.

Walburga escorted the other Black girls out. Even in the same school uniforms everyone wore they looked halfway regal, with perfectly styled hair and painstakingly performance-like mannerisms. Harry watched them go, and when they had, he flopped down onto the stack of pillows intended to support his head.

It seemed like hours went by with nothing to do. There was a clock on the wall telling him that only two hours had passed since the girls had visited but it felt more like twelve. The tick-tick-tick of the seconds seemed stretched and warped, the noise sometimes feeling gentle as cool water lapping on warm skin, sometimes harsh as a spoon clanging against a metal pan. 

The door creaked open, and Harry startled, so used to the alternating silence and clamour of the clock.

It was the woman in black and white from earlier. The matron. She hurried over to Harry and cast an eye over him. She turned to a cupboard and got out a vial of a purple-pink potion. SHe handed it to him. “Drink up!”

Harry fished his wand off the bedside table. “Venenum revelare!” Nothing happened, so he swigged the potion. It tasted like tarmac and grape flavoring.

The matron sighed. “You Slytherins. Always testing good medicine for poison.”

Harry shrugged. “Better safe than sorry.”

“Righty-o. You’re clear to leave now.”

Harry rolled out of the bed. “I’ll be off then,” he said. “Thank you, madam.”

He left the hospital wing, and headed to the Slytherin common room, humming cheery schemmelmusik tunes under his breath.

When he got there, a familiar face awaited him, framed by deepest chestnut curls with eyes like silver stars piercing forward.

“Harry,” said Tom.

Harry said nothing.

“Harry,” said Tom again, “I’m sorry I hurt you. Really I am.”

Harry sighed. “I don’t forgive you. But you deserve to know I’m not mad. I just don’t want to interact with you.”

“But Harry, I got angry and lost control, with all the things you were saying -”

“No.” Harry said. “I don’t want your excuses. I would have taken an apology but you’ve gone and ruined it with this. No, thanks. I don’t want any part of that. Don’t bother apologizing now. You don’t mean it, I won’t believe it. You’re hopeless, Tom, utterly and absolutely hopeless!”

“You’re hot when you’re angry,” Tom observed.

Harry’s face flushed. He wasn’t sure whether it was fury or embarrassment. “Well I think you’re hot too but that doesn’t mean I’m not mad and it doesn’t mean I have to like you! Just because of your stupid perfect jawline and stupid damn eyes - how the fuck to they look that sexy - doesn’t mean I can’t hate you! You’re an awful person, and not even an arse like yours can change that.”

Tom smiled. “So you like my arse,” he mused.

“Merlin, I hate you so much in this moment,” Harry whispered fiercely. “You awful, awful person, Tom. Throw me against a wall and make me unconscious and drive my magic levels down and lie about it and expect me to sit still and take it.”

“I did not drive your magic levels down! Nothing I did to you will have done that!”

“Oh so you admit it now? You’re ready to be honest now? I can’t trust someone like you. I can’t trust you. You’re a liar and you know it. Don’t make that concerned face, you bastard! Bastard! What did you do to me? Will you admit it now!”

Tom looked away. “It wasn’t much, Harry. I kicked you a few times, is all. Healed you afterwards. So you should be fine. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Harry, are you listening?”

“I can hear you but I don’t care that you’re sorry! That doesn’t change the fact that you did it in the first place. So what, I made you upset? That doesn’t give you the right to assault me!”

Tom was grinding his teeth. “Harry. Harry!”

“Shut up and leave me alone you bastard!” Harry stormed off, robes flying behind him.

Harry marched through the castle halls, face flushed and brows furrowed. Several first years that he passed squeaked and ran in the opposite direction, and two Ravenclaw girls clutched each other tightly. He stomped up several flights of stairs, even one that started moving as soon as he was on it, and angrily paced in an empty corridor. How dare that Tom Riddle do what he had done!

He noticed an open doorway and went in. A door that hadn’t been open before slammed behind him. Looking around, he noticed several battle dummies and a sofa. He blasted the dummies to bits - Confringo! Reducto! Incendio! - and flung himself onto the sofa. 

He lay still for a few moments, adrenaline pumping through his veins. Then he brought his knees to his head and, curled up in a ball like an armadillo, sobbed.

Salty tears tracked down his face and wet his shirt collar. He scrubbed them away, leaving tangy residue smeared on his hands and face, then collapsed once again into tears.

When he’d cried his heart out he returned to the common room. Tom was nowhere in sight, and he was glad. He didn’t want to deal with the other boy again.

Orion Black was sitting by the fire. “Hi, Harry,” he said,” seeing Harry come in. “I, uh, heard about your fight earlier today. Are you okay?”

Harry shrugged. “No. I’m not okay. But I don’t want to talk about it.”

Orion, who had been opening his mouth, closed it again. After a few moments he said, “all right. If anything changes, let me know.”

Harry nodded. “Thanks, Orion. That means a lot.”

Orion smiled softly. “It’s what cousins do. After all, I meant that offer. You occupy the same status as my parent’s sibling’s child to me.”

The two sat in silence for a moment. 

“It’s Saturday,” started Orion, “and tomorrow’s Sunday and then classes start. Maybe tomorrow, I could give you a tour? Show you all the hot spots, where to study, where to hang out, we could even go to Hogsmeade!”

“Hogsmeade?”

“Merlin’s balls, Harry, you don’t know Hogsmeade! It’s the little town right by Hogwarts - where the station is. Hogsmeade station? It’s called that because it’s in Hogsmeade. It’s only maybe a mile or so away, so a really easy walk. There’s a Flourish and Blotts, a Zonko’s, and some other things. A few pubs.” He smirked at Harry. “Which, of course, know better than to question a Black about his age and whether or not he should be drinking.”

“Orion!” exclaimed Harry, shaking his head. “Why, you rascal!”

Orion shrugged and chuckled, eyes glinting. “Not like I don’t have dirt on them, if I needed it. And if I really wanted, Cassiopeia has loads. Literally books upon books of blackmail material. Lucretia’s called in a few favors and Cassie has everything you could ever need. She’s scary. She’s got stuff on me, I know it, and she’ll start compiling stuff on you, too. Cassie has dirt on Lord Malfoy. And the Minister!”

“She has dirt on the Minister?” Harry asked incredulously.

Orion cackled. “She has dirt on the Minister!”

Harry’s stomach rumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since morning. The motion made his lower abdomen twang, and he winced. It was like he had some kind of damage down there - it’d happened once during training with Grindelwald, but there’d also been outside bruises then and it didn’t feel like that this time.

“You okay?” asked Orion.

Harry nodded. “Just hungry.”

Orion grinned. “Let me show you how Slytherins solve that problem. He stood up and headed toward the door. Harry followed.

Orion led Harry up several flights of stone steps, very unlike the arching wooden stairs the top part of the castle boasted, and around twisting hallways. There were no windows, only torches and statues and suits of armour. Harry inferred that they were still underground. Suddenly Orion stopped and stomped three times on the ground. Said ground opened up, stone bricks pressing into the sides of what was revealed to be a secret tunnel under the hallway. Harry watched with wide eyes as the sides of the tunnel became smooth granite, and the Primary Heir Apparent Black hopped, like a rabbit into a burrow, into the tunnel. “Come on, Harry!” his voice floated out from the hole he’d vanished into.

Harry looked suspiciously at the tunnel, but did as Orion said and followed.

Almost immediately he was delivered into a warm, wide kitchen with crackling fires all around the edge. Orion stood at the end of the tunnel, and unfortunately, smack dab in the middle. Harry shot out of the tunnel and into Orion. Both boys tumbled over, landing in a tangle of arms and legs.

Orion poked his head up. “Welcome to the Hogwarts kitchens!”

Harry looked around. The whole place glowed a soft, orangy, flickering light, and smelled like roast beef and potatoes. The heartily crackling fires cast such light shadows on the walls that the room didn’t seem enclosed at all, although it was underground. Stews boiled in merrily bubbling cauldrons, mouthwatering aromas swirling out and around his head. Rows of house elves, wrapped in tea towels with the Hogwarts insignia, perched on burnished wooden stools, chopping, slicing, dicing, icing, rolling, kneading, and decorating.

When the first one saw the two young wizards he nearly dropped the platter of mini pies he was carrying. “Master Black!” he exclaimed. “And Master Black has brought a friend!”

Orion nodded. “Two dinners, please, Harry here missed what we had in the Great Hall.”

“Dilly! Be bringng dinner for Master Black and Master Black’s friend!” called the house elf. “Is there anything else Crinkle be fetching for Masters?”

Orion shook his head. “That’ll be good for now, Crinkle.”

A second house elf soon pottered up balancing two plates, each heaped with steaming pork roast and mash. Harry dove right into his, ignoring the burn of his mouth and sudden pain in his stomach in favor of the tender meat.

The two finished their dinners, and Orion led the way back to the Slytherin dorms. “The elves are always willing to give you food if you ask,” he said.

Harry smirked, munching on a treacle tart he had liberated from the kitchen.


	3. Interlude: Madam Cherish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interlude with Hogwarts' own Madam Cherish Curador.

Madam Cherish Curador ran her hand through her hair. How could this have happened? Her scans were wrong! Her scans were never wrong.

But sure as she’d been a Hufflepuff, there it was.

Hadrian James Potter

Temperature: 37 degrees Celsius

Blood pressure: 90/50

Magical energy: 60%

Potions: dreamless sleep, healing level II

Troubling conditions: none

Unusual occurrences: farsightedness, mboc1 in blood, mmboc2 in magical channels

She stared at the parchment. ‘Mboc1’? ‘Mmboc2’? Those weren’t real things. A simpler scan hadn’t shown them, so it must be her performance on that particular scanning charm. She couldn’t let the Ministry know or they would send her back to basic healer training!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just an interlude - the regularly scheduled longer update is coming in a few days.


	4. To Hogsmeade

Harry rose early on Sunday. He stretched luxuriously in his bed, hidden from general view by the silver and green curtains draped all around the four-poster bed. He went to the toilet to relieve himself, and them into the communal shower. He stripped, glad to be the only one there, and started to run the water. He squirted shampoo into his hand and ran his fingers through his hair. Foam dripped down the side of his face and down his back.

“Nice to see you here,” said a voice from behind him.

Harry jumped, whirling around with his arms out to face the intruder, and the shampoo took the opportunity to flop into his eyes.

It stung.

A lot.

It was too early in the morning for this! He blinked a few times, but that only made the stinging worse, and he wobbled, wobbled, wobbled - he whizzed through the air - thud.

His arse landed hard on the stone floor. The impact rippled through his whole body, and his stomach howled in protest.

Harry hissed in frustration and pain.

“Need a hand?”

Now Harry recognized the voice. “Tom,” he groaned. Of course it had to be Tom Riddle. Of course it had to be the bastard whose guts he kept trying to hate.

Hands crept under his head and upper back. He was being held against a firm chest and then - Tom dunked his head into a stream of water just as he was inhaling.

He choked, flailing his arms and slapping what felt an awful lot like Tom’s face. Served him right! 

Tom said nothing, just swiped his fingers under Harry’s eyelid. It stung.

“Blink,” said Tom. Harry did.

Tom pulled him out of the water. “Better?”

Harry looked up at him as his vision cleared. “Much.”

Tom sighed. “No thanks?”

Harry just looked at him. 

Tom seemed to realize then, that he still had Harry cradled in his arms, bridal style. He set Harry on his feet, and looked down, faltering. “I did just save your life or something,” he said at last.

Harry laughed. “Or something! You got shampoo out of my eyes. That’s not the same thing.”

Tom chuckled, too. “I - yeah. Yeah.”

Harry looked him in the eye. “Look. Of all the people to, um, find me screaming because there was shampoo in my eyes, it would be you. We fucked in a train car.”

“We did fuck in a train car,” Tom agreed.

“Anyway,” said Harry, “what I was trying to say, I suppose, is that I forgive you. That’s not a ‘don’t do it again’ mind you - I don’t appreciate being hurt, and I’m not into nonconsensual stuff.”

“Nonconsensual -” Tom choked. “I would never. Harry. I would never. Even I wouldn’t go that far.”

Harry stared at him grimly. “You haven’t done much to prove that you wouldn’t. For now, I’ll believe you because I want to believe you, Tom Riddle. I want to believe that you’re better than that.”

Tom stepped closer to Harry. “Harry. This is - something I don’t talk about, and you’d better not spill, not like I wouldn’t Obliviate you and whoever you told if you do, but, uhm, please? Keep it a secret.”

Harry nodded. “Okay.”

Tom twisted his hands in a snakelike circling, twining motion. 

“My mum was a poor woman. Abused horribly by her father and brother. She had a dispicable, petty, juvenile crush on a Muggle man - she was a witch, a descendant of Salazar Slytherin himself, and she drugged him - a rich Muggle whose ancestors no doubt slaughtered many an innocent witch - and she raped him, and I was conceived, and she stopped drugging him then and he left her. He left me. He wouldn’t even stay for his own son and she gave birth and didn’t use her magic to stay alive for me and they left me in an orphanage!”

Harry had been silent through the entire tirade. “Tom,” he said, shocked. “I’m sorry that happened. I’m sorry you grew up in an orphanage. It’s over now. You’re here, and you can get over it, even if it haunts you.”

“You won’t blab?”

“No, Tom. I won’t.”

“Thank you.”

The water in the communal showers was still running. Harry realized, when he looked at Tom, that Tom was sopping wet. He looked pointedly at the water dripping down Tom’s robes until Tom noticed.

Tom shrugged, and unbuttoned his outer robe, letting it drop around his feet. “Care to help me, Harry?” he asked casually.

Harry looked up and down Tom’s water-slicked figure. “Sure,” he said, and, grasping onto the soaking white material, gave a sharp tug, ripping the garment down. The row of black buttons popped off in a smooth sequence, clattering to the stone floor. 

“Oi! That was my shirt!” Tom complained.

Harry shrugged. “I’ll fix it. Or better, buy you a new one.”

“I could filch one from Abraxas,” Tom mused. 

“You could filch one from Abraxas,” agreed Harry, leaning in close enough that the hair on Tom’s chest tickled his nose. “Or, you could fuck me. Right here, right now.”

“I can’t do both?” yelped Tom, even as Harry felt Tom’s erection brushing into his stomach, which gave its customary twinge. 

“You can, but not at the same time,” Harry said, laughing a bit as he imagined it. “Not sure how well that’d work.”

Tom pushed Harry back a bit. “You can explain why I feel the urge to do this to you.”

Harry shrugged. “I don’t know, because we’re horny teenagers?”

“Yes, but I usually only use sex for manipulation,” frowned Tom. “And you don’t offer me much.”

Harry looked pointedly at the tent in Tom’s trousers. “Try that again when you’ve convinced your whole body.”

Tom flushed, the redness spreading down his chest. “You have the same problem.”

Harry looked unabashedly down at his own erection. “Problem? I wouldn’t call this a problem. But, that…” and he turned his attention to Tom’s, “that looks like the solution to the problem I am having.”

“Oh?” Tom practically purred. “How so?”

“Well,” Harry started as if he were telling a sob story to a therapist, “I’m feeling awfully… wound up. I could do with some stress relief.”

Tom undid the zip holding his pants up, and shucked them off. “Let me be of assistance, then,” he said, approaching Harry. He licked his fingers and inserted one, then two, then three into Harry’s entrance. He smiled. “You’re ready for me, aren’t you?”

Harry pulled Tom into a bruising kiss, ravishing Tom’s mouth with sucking and tongue and the scraping of teeth on Tom’s lower lip until both their lips were swollen and bright red and they were gasping for breath. 

“You’re not a bad kisser,” Tom commented between ragged gasps for air.

“You’re not half bad yourself,” Harry replied. 

Tom ran his hand over Harry’s length, making Harry gasp. “Culcitario!” he cast before shoving Harry over.

Harry collapsed expecting another bone-cracking thud, but all that happened was a muffled thump. The spell Tom had used must have been a cushioning spell. 

“Hands and knees,” grunted Tom, kneeling behind Harry. Harry did as Tom asked, putting his arse on full display.

Tom gave an experimental prod, then Harry felt Tom entering him. He groaned as Tom started to establish a rhythm - in and out. In and out. Tom started going deeper. Harry’s breath shuttered as Tom’s thickness filled him up. 

And then it hurt like hell.

Immediately Harry felt his hole clench up around Tom, who seemed suddenly much too thick for Harry, and much too far in, and it hurt - Merlin, it hurt!

Tom thrust harder. “So tight,” he rasped from behind Harry.

Harry gritted his teeth to keep a pained howl quiet. “T-Tom,” he hissed, “stop it, I can’t - take you-”

Tom, to his credit, did stop. “If you’re sure, Harry. You were fine on Friday, though!”

Harry sighed. “Yeah, but I - since then, I don’t know, this has never happened before, and I’ve - well. I’ve taken some decent girth. Since then I’ve been having these pains, in my stomach and my arse.”

Tom sighed, and pulled out of Harry, very gently. His cock was full and pulsing. Harry looked longingly at it.

“That’s odd. Definitely something I’ll have to look into.”

Harry’s head pricked up. “Oh, right! You said you were going to research, um, that soulmate thing? You mentioned, on the train, that weird head talky thing…”

‘This?’ came Tom’s voice in Harry’s head.

Harry nodded. “Yeah that. Anyway, you mentioned it, and I just thought I’d ask, because you know it concerns me too, right? Can’t have a soulmate bond with just one person. And I wondered if you’d found anything out.”

Tom shook his head. “No, sorry. I haven’t had the chance to go to the library yet this term. I’ll go later - in fact, you’re not helpless, you can come with me. Do your own research.”

Harry made a face. “I hate studying,” he groaned, for quite a different reason than he had been groaning a few minutes before. “I only like practical.”

“You’re going to need to study at some point. Think about your NEWTs!”

“NEWTs? Ew,” Harry wrinkled his nose. “I am not looking forward to that.”

Tom sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Please tell me I haven’t been fucking a nincompoop who’ll fail all his NEWTs.”

“I’m not sure we got far enough for long enough for it actually to be considered fucking?” offered Harry meekly.

“Yeah, not working as an excuse. I can’t help my attraction to you, but I can help your grades. I will tutor you.”

“Don’t I get a say in the matter?” Harry objected.

Tom looked into his eyes. “I believe you already did. What was it you said? That I was the solution to the problem you’ve been having?”

Harry’s face flamed. “That - that is not what I meant!”

Tom smirked. “It’s what you said.”

Harry’s head fell into his hands. “Merlin, you - oh, Merlin.”

“That’s settled then, regular tutoring sessions, and today you’ll be accompanying me to the Hogwarts Library.”

Harry’s head snapped back up. “Hold on! You never asked if I was free!”

“You have plans?” Tom’s voice was incredulous.

“As a matter of fact I do! I’m going to Hogsmeade with Orion Black! He offered to take me yesterday.”

“Oh well, Orion offered and you absolutely had to do it,” Tom snarked. “Couldn’t say no because your soulmate might want something, oh no.”

“Excuse you! Yesterday we had a fight!”

Tom stared at him for several solid minutes before backing down. “That… is true, I suppose.”

Harry sighed. “I’ll come to the library after Orion and I get back, all right?”

Tom nodded slowly. “I’m amenable to that idea.”

“Amenable!” Harry laughed. “Merlin, Tom. Amenable!”

It was Tom’s turn to let his head sink into his hands.

Harry looked around them and sighed. “I’m going to need another shower,” he said.

Tom looked up. “Yes, yes, I suppose you will. And I will, too - I would propose hot, steamy shower sex, but that doesn’t seem to be an option, does it.”

Harry shook his head. “Nope. Not an option. But I do like seeing you naked!”

Tom smirked. “Well then.”

He stood up and stepped back under the stream of water still flowing from Harry’s shower earlier that morning. He beckoned to Harry, who approached him hesitantly.

“Don’t forget what happened earlier,” Tom said. “I think I’ll wash your hair for you.”

And he did. Harry closed his eyes and let Tom’s long fingers run through his hair, teasing out knots he hadn’t known were there. Tom rinsed Harry’s hair, keeping one hand cupped over Harry’s eyes, then massaged body wash into Harry’s skin. It was sensual, the way his fingers brushed over Harry in sweeping swirls. It felt so good. 

When Tom had finished, and cleaned himself, Harry made good on his offer and cast Reparo on the white shirt he had ripped up. The two dressed in silence, Tom in the robes he’d brought in with him and Harry in the uniform he had summoned from his trunk.

When they emerged from the showers, Cygnus Black and Montgomery Lestrange were the only two boys still in the dorms. Cygnus wore a blank face that probably meant he was hiding immense amusement that he was too composed to show. Montgomery’s eyes widened, looking from Tom to Harry to Tom again.

“A-a-a…”

“Yes?” asked Tom, eyes glinting with impatience.

“Are you a couple!” choked out Montgomery.

Tom stared at him for a moment, then whirled on his heel and stormed out of the room, robes flying out behind him like an imposing shadow.

Harry watched him go with a growing feeling of dread in his stomach more to do with Tom’s absence than with his mysterious pain. As Tom disappeared through the doorway Harry chased after him.

“Tom! Tom wait!”

Tom didn’t wait. He powered through the common room, head held up stubbornly.

“Tom!” cried Harry again! “Wait for me!”

Tom ignored his calls and kept going. He left the common room and slammed the door behind him.

“Harry.”

A hand fell on Harry’s shoulder. He turned to find Orion standing awkwardly behind him.

“Hey Harry,” said Orion. “I saw you running, and, um. Let’s go down to Hogsmeade and get breakfast there? If you’re still up for it.”

Harry nodded. “Yeah. That’ll be nice.”

“Let’s get our cloaks,” said Orion. “Come on.”

He led Harry back through the common room amidst the stares of younger years. They entered the seventh year dorm. Cygnus nodded to Orion.

“Cousin Orion,” said Cygnus.

“Cousin Cygnus,” said Orion. “Can I borrow your black and silver cloak?”

“Oh, go ahead.” Cygnus waved his wand at his trunk - embossed with the initials C. B. - which opened to reveal a meticulously sorted inside. A thick cloak, black with silver detailing, floated out and with a flick of Cygnus’ wand, into Orion’s waiting arms.

Harry, for his part, knelt and rummaged for his own cloak. It was a faded forest green with a black hem and clasp.

“Ready to go?” he asked Orion.

Orion nodded and smiled, leading the way out of the seventh year dorms, down the stairs, into the common room, out of the common room, up several flights of stairs, and to a small wooden door.

“Here we are!” he announced.

Harry looked skeptically at the door. It was made of old wooden planks, with rusty metal hinges and bolts. It aso only came to his shoulder, and Harry knew he was short.

“This?”

Orion nodded. “Yeah. Old thing, but it lets us out.” He pushed on the door. It didn’t budge. 

“Give me a hand, Harry?”

Harry shoved the door. It was heavy. Very heavy. He and Orion braced their feet against the floor and pushed, pushed, pushed…

Ending up in a heap on the ground for the second time in as many days.

“Again!” exclaimed Orion.

“Again,” agreed Harry. “Wonder when it’ll happen tomorrow.”

Orion laughed as he stood up and dusted himself off. He reached down to give Harry a hand, which Harry took, and tugged him to his feet.

The two passed quite a few picturesque scenes as they walked the mile and a half to get to Hogsmeade. A herd of highland cattle, grazing on tall, windswept wildgrasses. Their brown bodies, encased in thick fur, dotted the landscape like stars in the sky. Viviparous lizards warmed their long, slinky bodies on scattered boulders, scaled glinting in the sunlight, and making what would have been drab coloring beautifully glossy, their stripes seeming to hold a thousand colors.

Red kites circled overhead, their distinctive rusty red bodies supported by stark black and white striped wings. One let out a shrill scream, echoed by another. The cries reverberated, growing fainter, bouncing off the highland hills.

On the ground, a group of rock ptarmigan pecked for seeds, and croaked in the way only ptarmigan could. They were molting, their brown summer feathers falling away, being replaced by the stark white of winter plumage. Clever as their changing camouflage might be, against the drab hilly background the earlier molters were painfully visible.

As the two wizards approached the village of Hogsmeade, Orion pointed out a canal that went right through the village. “That,” he said, “is one of Scotland’s only canals exclusively used by wixen. Any muggle who tries to enter finds it dry. That’s why it’s the only place in the UK underage wixen can freely practice magic outside school. Even mudbloods! Not that laws don’t apply to us, of course, we just get away with ignoring them.”

Harry nodded, understanding that. As a magical child, he’d lived with muggles until he’d turned eleven. In fact, the day before his eleventh birthday a handsome wizard who called himself Mr. Grindelwald had taken him under his wing - or in this case, atop his thestral - and brought him into Austria. The Austrian magical government had some quite stringent rules about underage magic - it was outlawed until age 20, and the third offense was punishable by the holding of the young wixen’s wand until the person reached 20 years of age - but the standard trackers put all the magic Harry had been using, including some quite Dark stuff, down to Grindelwald. It didn’t even notice Harry was using his own wand!

He’d had a friend who tried to use magic at home, though - a muggleborn. They’d both been twelve when the AMC appeared and consfiscated his wand. That had been the end of outside friendships for Harry.

“That’s awesome,” he said out loud.

“I know, right? Every year, we have huge parties there. Nobody tracks magic on the canal, so contraceptive spells and anti-intoxication charms go unnoticed. Nobody wants a professor to be wondering which wand you’re using!”

“Oh, Merlin, no!” Harry chuckled.

“Want to get malted milks from Honeydukes? They’re enriched, so they’re good for you. As good as a meal!” exclaimed Orion.

“Sure,” said Harry. He pointed at a modest building, with wide windows boasting a view of stands upon stands of sweets, with letters lit up on the front: HONEYDUKES.

“Yep!” Orion sauntered inside, Harry following closely behind. 

“Hello,” Orion greeted the man at the counter. “Two malted milks, please.”

“Small or regular?” inquired the man.

“Regular,” Orion said.

The man passed them two malted milkshakes. “Thank you!” said Orion, slipping a few Galleons across the counter. He waved off Harry’s attempt to reach into his own pocket. “My treat.”

“Thanks,” said Harry.

Orion grinned. “You’re welcome.”

The malted milks were every bit as good as Orion had said. The homely flavor washed over Harry’s mouth and reminded him of spring days and sunshine and the bedtime stories he’d convinced Grindelwald to read to him when he was eleven. 

Orion pointed at a bookshop. “Flourish and Blotts. Every kind of book you could ask for, parchment, with all sorts of helpful enchantments, quills of every kind - even dicta-quills, although you’ve got to have a special note if you want to use them in class. Otherwise we’d all just sleep through History of Magic!”

“Really? History of Magic is fascinating,” Harry said. “Reenactment and spell development!”

Orion’s jaw dropped. “Reenactment? Spell development? All our professor talks about are the Goblin Wars!”

“The Goblin Wars?” Harry wrinkled his nose. “Boring!”

“I know, right? But it’s all he ever talks about! Professor Binns is ancient, he’s been teaching here since my grandparents were at Hogwarts and it doesn’t look like he plans on retiring anytime soon.” Orion said.

“Merlin’s beard, that’s old. Want to go in?” Harry indicated Flourish and Blotts. “I want to pick up a new roll of parchment.”

Orion nodded. “Sure!” 

Flourish and Blotts smelled like ink and old books, reminding Harry of Grindelwald’s library back in Austria. Not that he’d gone in there much (apart from to hide when he’d accidentally destroyed the kitchen table) but it reminded him of the place he’d begun to think of as home. 

Harry ended up purchasing a few standard, high quality quills, a bottle of black ink, and two rolls of parchment. “I don’t want to run out,” he explained.

Next, Orion showed Harry Zonko’s Joke Shop. Harry was astounded - he’d never seen anything like it! Fake wands that exploded when you tried to cast a spell, sweets to make your tongue look like a snake’s, to make you speak in rhythms or songs, or to make you hop on one leg, fake Chocolate Frog cards that had your face on, mirrors that showed you as you had been the day before, disappearing ink, ice cream that turned your skin blue, a realistic owl that would deliver your mail and then deflate like a balloon! There was everything a prankster could want. 

When the two Slytherins trudged back up the hills, they had pockets loaded with sweets from Honeydukes and various Zonko’s products. Orion had a mischievous glint in his eyes. 

Harry, for his part, felt warm and happy, sucking on a Liquorice Wand, glad to have made a friend like Orion.


	5. Interlude: An Excerpt From The Bodies of Bearers: Unmasking the Wombs of Men

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Bodies of Bearers: Unmasking the Wombs of Men
> 
> a book on male pregnancy and everything concerning it.

An excerpt from The Bodies of Bearers: Unmasking the Wombs of Men

Pregnancy, although tough, is especially difficult for males. The male anatomy is simply not made for bearing children! However, in those situations when a male pregnancy occurs - with pregnancy-inducing potions, specific charms, incantations, or rituals, or a soulmate bonding, the male body must change.

The penis and testes remain throughout pregnancy. It is therefore possible for a man to impregnate someone else with his child. If this other person were the father of the child he was carrying, and the conceptions occurred within two months of each other, the resulting children would be regarded as fraternal twins.

The child is carried in an offshoot of the seminal vesicle. When a male ejaculates inside the rectum, and he and his partner have taken measures to induce pregnancy, part of the seminal vesicle splits off, attaches to the rectum to take the sperm of the non-bearing parent. This action is caused by the presence of the protein mboc1. To prevent severe internal injury, mmboc2*, a magical particle, must enter the magical channels where it causes a reaction similar to metamorphmagi abilities. This vesicle offshoot will then grow longer before it grows wider, forming the male uterus. The child and placenta remain in the wide section of the male uterus, located under the stomach, until it is time for birth, when the child exits the bearer head-first through the longer part of the male uterus and into the rectum. 

During the first stages of pregnancy, a bearer will notice pain in the abdomen where the seminal vesicle is forming the male uterus. Internal bleeding is a common side effect, and blood pressure may be low, but pregnancy potions, charms, and rituals include provisions for that, and harm to the bearer during this stage is unlikely. 

*As the body rapidly changes, mmboc2 (magical male bodily organ change) acts to prevent loss of excess blood and forms a barrier around the other organs to protect them. Mmboc2 is typically given as a potion to the bearer. It is found naturally in those who are active metamorphmagi, and in trace amounts in those who are carriers of metamorphmagi abilities. Metamorphmagic has occurred, albeit rarely, in the children of those conceived using mmboc2 supplements. It is thought that using mmboc2 during pregnancy, as is necessary during male pregnancy, causes the fetus to develop passive metamorphmagic. When they themselves have children with another metamorphmagic carrier, the active metamorphmagi abilities present.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know there were some questions about this after the last interlude, so I hope this explains that. I actually wrote this first... this book will appear again later *secretive smile*
> 
> Thanks for reading! It's hard to believe you guys enjoy reading what I have to write.
> 
> As always, comments and kudos are appreciated. Love you guys!


	6. Killer Question

When Harry and Orion got back to the common room, it was lunchtime. Most of their housemates had gone down to lunch - or, more accurately, every other Slytherin except Tom Riddle had gone down to lunch.

“Harry,” said Tom, and Harry couldn’t explain the warmth in his chest at hearing Tom say his name, at seeing Tom waiting for him.

“Hi,” said Harry.

“Shall we go to lunch?” asked Tom, and Harry nodded in response. 

Orion looked between them and walked away as fast as could be called polite. Harry looked after him, ready to follow, but Tom’s hand on his arm stopped him.

“How was Hogsmeade?” asked Tom.

“Oh, it was great!” Harry gushed. “It looked like a postcard, and Orion showed me some of the main places. Honeydukes had so many British sweets I didn’t know existed!”

Tom smiled. “I can feel your happiness,” he said.

“Oh?” asked Harry.

“You know how you can hear my voice in your head when I try to think at you?” asked Tom. Harry nodded. “Well, it’s like that, except that I know Occlumency and you don’t, so your more powerful emotions leak through. Mine don’t leak, because I shield them.”

“Interesting,” mused Harry as they walked into the Great Hall. Tom led him to the Slytherin table, where he insisted Druella move over - which she did quickly - so Harry could sit next to him.

Lunch was a simple fare, sandwiches of various kinds, and Harry helped himself to a ham and cheese. Tom, he noted, was having a sandwich made with a roll and slices of roast beef.

Callidora, the Black girl, was eating brie when a much older Hufflepuff approached her. Harry frowned. Hufflepuffs, even he knew, weren’t known to socialize with Slytherins. Especially not in public.

“Miss Black,” said the Hufflepuff.

Callidora looked up. “Oh. Longbottom, it’s you.”

The Hufflepuff smiled down at her. “I thought I told you to call me Harfang.”

“Harfang, then.”

He smiled. “It sounds so beautiful coming from your pretty mouth.”

Harry narrowed his eyes. Callidora had been caught off guard.

“O-oh,” she stammered. “Thank you, Harfang.”

Harfang set his hand on her shoulder. “You really are a pretty girl.”

Callidora blinked uncertainly. “Thank you, Harfang, how sweet.”

Harfang smiled again. “Oh, batting your eyes at me? You don’t need to do that, love.”

“Love? Harfang - what?” Callidora’s voice was hesitant, breathy.

“More salad, Callidora?” Septimus Weasley, the Gryffindor, butted in. Callidora looked to him gratefully.

“Oh, yes please.”

Harfang scowled and turned away.

‘What was that?’ Harry asked through his mind link with Tom.

‘Harfang Longbottom thinks he can court Callidora Black. The twelve year old. Clumsy job of it he’s doing, too, as if a seventeen year old and a twelve year old child were a decent match.’ explained Tom through the bond.

Harry wrinkled his nose. ‘Eww.’

‘Quite,’ agreed Tom, pushing his now-empty plate away. “Ready, Harry?” he said aloud.

Cassiopeia Black looked up at that. She, like Montgomery Lestrange in the morning, looked between the two of them. Unlike Montgomery, she looked back down and didn’t make a public scene.

Slytherins kept Slytherin problems in Slytherin.

Harry followed Tom out of the Great Hall and to the Hogwarts Library.

The library smelled of dusty books, some having been untouched for years. Harry didn’t doubt that was true. There were torches, magical ones - little balls of fire hovering above metal spikes engraved with runes. He assumed they must stop the fire from spreading, and keep it burning without fuel. Otherwise, the library would have burned down centuries ago.

The library curator was a dark-skinned man with thick black hair. He was seated in the middle of an elaborately carved dark wood kiosk in the middle of the curving shelves. “Mr. RIddle,” he greeted.

“Mr. Olatunji,” Tom greeted. “This is Harry Potter - he’s new.”

“Hullo,” said Harry.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Potter,” said Mr. Olatunji. 

“Harry and I are looking for books on soul magic for a special project we took on,” Tom lied smoothly. “Have any recommendations as to where to look?”

“Soul magic, eh! Try aisle seven,” advised Mr. Olatunji.

“Thank you, sir,” said Tom, angling his head toward the aisle Mr. Olatunji had indicated. “Come on, Harry.”

They walked over to the aisle, where Tom tilted his head sideways to read the book titles. Curious as to what Hogwarts’ famed library boasted in the way of soul magic, Harry did the same.

The Key: How Souls are Formed

Secrets of the Darkest Arts

Magick Moste Evile

Soul Magic and Divination

Soul Magic and Possible Ties to Spell Development

Soul Magic and Herbology

Do Plants Have Souls

Soul Theory

Soul Theorists of the 15th Century

Soul Theory and Muggle Religion

Soul Theory and Dark Magic

Despicable Skills

Famous Muggle Cullings

Culling as a Moral Art

Advanced Necromancy

Souls Aren’t Real and Other Muggle Beliefs

Magical Core Development as it Relates to the Soul

Soul Bonds Composium

Beginning Soul Magic

Lessones From a Darke Lord

Soulmate Bonds

The Soul Bond Lexicon

History of Soul Bonds

“Excuse me,” said Tom, deftly sliding books off the shelf. Then he slid into a corner of the library, where a table with benches on both sides was built into the wall. He patted the bench beside him, where Harry sat.

Tom flipped open Soul Bonds Composium. “Composium,” he muttered, “not even a real word.”

Harry fidgeted on the bench, his stomach cramping. It felt like really bad gas, the likes of which he’d never had before, or something squirming. He pressed his hand to his belly, trying not to let Tom notice.

Tom noticed. “That was bothering you earlier, wasn’t it?”

Harry nodded. “I don’t know why.”

“You should get it checked out,” advised Tom. He closed his book with a sigh. “When are you free for tutoring, then?”

“Tutoring - you’re serious!”

Tom nodded, face blank. “How are Fridays?”

Harry made a face that had nothing to do with the odd sensation in his belly and everything to do with Tom’s suggestion. “No!”

“Thursdays?”

“Tom, I don’t want tutoring!”

Tom stared at him. “You’re my soulmate,” he said in an odd voice, “you’re going to have tutoring and you’re going to get decent NEWTs.”

“I’ll get all the decent NEWTs I need.” Harry objected.

Tom raised an infuriatingly perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Will you?”

Harry blushed. “Well - practical NEWTs,” he amended.

Tom folded his arms. “You’ll do well on all your NEWTs, because I will be helping you - and not to cheat!”

“I’ll be fine, I don’t need your help!” Harry stood up and looked angrily at Tom.

“Well, I need you to have it. I won’t have my reputation ruined by a soulmate who fails his bloody NEWTs!”

“Reputation? Reputation?” Harry’s eyes widened as his voice jumped higher. “Is that all I am to you?”

“That’s not what I meant, Harry! You will do well - you need to do well! If you fail NEWTs it’s on your permanent record, everybody knows, nobody will hire you - Harry, please. I will not have my soulmate struggling.”

“That could have been such a kind thing to say,” said Harry, much more quietly than before, “if you’d said it any other way. But I guess I’m not going to get any other way.”

Tom’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t like the way I am?”

“No,” Harry quickly backtracked, “no, no, that’s not what I meant at all. I do. Tom, I do like the way you are - not, uhm, well. But I like it. I guess I do like the way you are. I just - oh, never mind!”

“No, I’m curious,” said Tom, his voice icy. “Whatever do you mean, Harry?”

Harry fumbled in his head for words. “I, um. I just don’t like you insinuating that I don’t know what I’m doing, that I’m incompetant - useless - pointless. I know what I’m doing. I know my subjects. I’m just not all that good at theory, and Tom, that’s okay. Not everyone has to be as good at things as you are.”

“They do, however, have to have some comprehension of the subject,” said Tom scathingly. “Which I have not been assured you have.”

“Oh, Merlin’s balls, Tom, I understand the stuff! I can do all sorts of spells! Look: Accio! Aries avimorphi! Canere psallo! Etreforte! Etrecanard! Etrechat! Etrechien! Reducto!”

Tom stared. “So? I don’t see what summoning a scrap bit of paper, making it into a paper aeroplane, making it sing, then turning it into a duck, a cat, and a dog and then making it disappear have to do with knowing your history of magic and rune theory.”

“I invented some of those spells, Tom. I invented them. Spell Creation isn’t taught at Hogwarts anymore. And I know it! Imagine how groundbreaking that could be.”

Tom looked grudgingly impressed. “That… that is good.”

Harry let a silence fall between them, thick like fog and clean like ice. Tom shattered it with one comment: “Tutoring, then?” he said.

“Oh Merlin, Tom! What have we just been fighting about! It’s like you only want to spend time with me. I don’t need lessons. I don’t need tutoring. I’ll be fine. What do you want, a date? Then ask me on a date!” Harry threw back.

Tom looked taken aback. “Harry, I…”

“Although most wizards would take me on a date before fucking me in a train car,” continued Harry, “and then again two days later. But you’re not most wizards, I suppose, but even so. Bit of a funny order to do it in, huh? Ha, do it. Get it? If you have a sense of humor.”

“I have a sense of humor!” cried Tom, indignant. “I do! I do!”

“Oh really. Ha.”

“Fine then! Harry Potter, will you come, with me-”

“We found out this morning that’s probably not happened,” interrupted Harry.

Tom rolled his eyes. “You filthy minded little thing. I said come, C-O-M-E, not cum.”

“Oh.” Harry looked down. “Well then.”

“Anyway,” Tom continued, “Harry Potter, will you come with me-”

Harry interrupted again. “All right, all right, I’ve heard this before.”

“Well, let me finish,” complained Tom. “Harry, will you come with me to Hogsmeade, on a romantic date?”

Harry’s emerald eyes were wide. “You can be romantic?” he asked, sounding astounded.

“Come with me, and you’ll see,” said Tom.

“That’s sexual.”

“Oh, Merlin. Not again.”

Harry cackled. “I can’t help that it’s funny!”

“You think it’s funny,” pointed out Tom.

“And you don’t?” Harry questioned.

Tom squirmed in his seat, pink dusting his porcelain cheeks. “That wasn’t the point!” he eventually snapped.

Harry sighed. “I haven’t given you an answer yet, have I?”

“No. No, you have not. Honestly, this is my soulmate? Do opposites really attract?”

Harry crossed his arms. “Fine. Yes. Yes, you can take me on a date to Hogsmeade.”


	7. Breakfast Observations

The next morning Harry dressed smartly in his school robes, with one small problem.

“Can anyone here help me tie my tie?” he chucked embarrassedly. What kind of seventeen year old wizard couldn’t tie his own tie?

“I’ll do it,” said Tom, stepping forward. He leaned over Harry, his forehead almost touching Harry’s. His breath was minty - he’d just brushed his teeth.

His long, elegant fingers brushed Harry’s cheek as they danced over the cloth of Harry’s tie, tugging it tight and neat. 

“Stunning,” he whispered, then drew back.

“Thanks, Tom,” said Harry.

The Slytherin seventh years left the dorms in a group, and descended the stairs, collecting sixth, fifth, fourth, third, second, and first years as they went. Younger students were filtered into the middle, and the older students pressed the group into a snakelike procession. 

When they arrived in the Great Hall for breakfast, Tom was in the lead, with sixth and seventh years all around the edges. The Slytherins trooped to their table and sat down.

Tom rather pointedly made a space next to him, and patted it to indicate where Harry should sit. Harry’s cousin Druella Rosier shooed him to Tom’s side, and, reluctantly, he went.

“Watch,” said Tom quietly, “and see how much you’ll learn about them.”

So Harry did.

Walburga Black was as prim and uptight as ever, makeup flawlessly applied to accentuate her natural looks. Her composure was perfect, even with the forlorn, lovesick gaze of Druella Rosier fixed on her.

Druella, Harry’s cousin, had plump lips and dark skin. Her curly hair was pulled back in twin dutch braids tied with green ribbons. She was more adventurous in her table-sitting etiquette than Walburga with an arm resting on the table.

Cassius, Druella’s brother and Harry’s other cousin, looked very much like Druella, but had his hair short, extending maybe half an inch past his scalp. He was talking to Alphard Black - Cygnus’ and Walburga’s brother.

Alphard had the traditional Black alabaster skin and dark eyes. His curls were longer than his male family members’; he had let them grow to shoulder length. 

As Harry watched, Montgomery Lestrange leaned over and whispered something to Alphard that had the Black boy flushing. Alphard was shaking his head. “Montgomery, no,” he said.

“Why not?” Montgomery asked, appearing insulted. “Is it because I’m-”

Alphard shook his head. “No, it’s not. My answer would be the same if you were a girl. It’s not you, it’s me - I’m ace.”

“Ace?” asked Montgomery.

“Yes. Asexual. I wouldn’t want to go off and do… whatever with you no matter what. Not that being ace is the only reason I might not be interested in that.”

Montgomery sniffed and turned away from Alphard, his eyes glistening.

Cassiopeia tilted her head. “I wouldn’t mind it, though, Montgomery,” she said. “Ten Galleons?”

Montgomery let out a stilted sob and ran out of the room.

Cassiopeia shrugged. “Oh well. Druella, you up for ten galleons?”

Druella broke her gaze away from Walburga, and stared at Cassiopeia. She shook her head. “My heart is already claimed,” she said.

Abraxas Malfoy, who clearly had not been listening in and had no idea what was going on, chimed in then. “Really, Druella? You’re engaged? Congratulations!”

Druella laughed. “I’m not engaged, Abraxas… just in love.”

Abraxas smiled. “I know the feeling.” He looked around. “Where did Montgomery go?”

Cassiopeia stepped closer to Druella. “My niece?” she hissed.

“She’s older than you are!”

Cassiopeia grimaced. “Pollux was… born when my parents were younger, true, but she’s still my niece.”

“In name only,” muttered Druella.

“You know she’ll never fall for you,” Cassiopeia murmured. “She knows it’s her responsibility to have a son with a pureblood male. She won’t get over it. Honestly, Druella, what’s stopping you from having some fun?”

Druella folded her arms. “I won’t cheat.”

Cassiopeia winced. “Druella, you and Walburga have nothing together. Nothing. You don’t have a chance in hell, she’s determined.”

Druella balled her hands into fists. “She’s persistent, I like that about her.”

Cassiopeia sighed. “If you insist on this wild goose chase.”

“It’s not a wild goose chase! She’ll realize!” Druella insisted.

Cassiopeia just walked away.

Harry looked at Tom with wide eyes.

“This is what it is,” Tom said.

“That’s awful, poor Druella,” whispered Harry.

Tom shrugged. “Walburga is one of the older girls. She’s expected to marry high.”

“And Druella isn’t?”

Tom shook his head. “Well, it’s not that. But the Blacks and Rosiers already have a well-working business relationship without a marriage. Why waste her hand when there is political gain to be had?”

“That’s terrible! Doesn’t she deserve love?”

“It is how it is.”

“Don’t you want to change it?” Harry insisted.

“Someday,” Tom conceded. “At the moment, the best way to make sure that’ll work in the future is to make myself impressive and worth listening to now.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Is this going to be about the NEWTs again?”

Tom schooled his features into an innocent look. “Did I mention NEWTs?”

Harry sighed. “So. Classes today, huh?”

Tom nodded. “What do you have?’

Harry pulled out the schedule Professor Slughorn had given him. “Defense Against the Dark Arts.”

Tom smiled. “Me, too. Care to walk together?”

Harry nodded. “Sure.”

Tom stood up and offered Harry a hand, which he took. As the two set off to the common room to collect their books, Harry realized something.

“Tom? Are we dating?”

Tom licked his lower lip. “Might be a little early to call it that, Harry…”

Harry blushed. “I… I just wondered.”

Tom looked at Harry’s scarlet face and said, “we could be dating if you wanted us to be.”

“Um.” Harry scuffed his feet. “Um. I don’t know what to say!”

“Then say nothing,” advised Tom. They had reached their dorm room, and Tom nipped in, coming back out with both his bookbag and Harry’s. “Everything you need in here?”

Harry opened his bag and looked. “Yes. Thanks.”

“You’re very welcome, Harry,” purred Tom.

The pair walked down the Hogwarts halls, past several interesting snake statues that almost seemed to move and smell Harry and Tom. Soon, they had arrived.

“This is it,” said Tom with a flourish. He let Harry walk in first.

The Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor was an elderly woman with graying hair who seemed to exude energy. “Mr. Riddle! And this must be our new addition, Mr… Potter, was it?”

Harry nodded. “Yes, madam!”

She smiled. “How polite! You pick good company, Mr. Riddle. Well, I’m Professor Merrythought. Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor. Please, sit anywhere, and you won’t be needing those books today, it’ll be entirely practical. I’m looking forward to seeing what you’re capable of, Mr. Potter!”

Harry smiled back. “I do think I’m decent. I was given good training before I came here.”

“Oh! How lovely. By anyone I might know, perchance?”

Harry shook his head. “Oh no, I shouldn’t think so.” 

Grindelwald’s ideas, Harry knew, weren’t very well-received in Britain. So much so that the British had started a war against him! On several occasions Harry had wondered if the Dark wizard would have been better received if he had started a tart-making company instead of trying to conquer Europe. The man’s baking was just so mouthwateringly good!

Or maybe he could suppress the British forces with treacle tarts…? It would certainly work on Harry, he thought wryly - he’d just stuff himself until he burst!

The other students had started arriving, so Harry and Tom sat at the front, Tom, of course, insisting Harry sit next to him. Not that Harry was objecting - he was rather enjoying the gorgeous Slytherin’s attention.

“Today we will be dueling,” said Professor Merrythought when everyone had come in. “As seventh years, you are equipped with all the skills you’ll need to keep yourself safe. Of course, if you plan on becoming an Auror, Curse Breaker, Dragon Tamer, or pursuing another career involving regular exposure to danger, you will be expected to complete more advanced defense courses. For those of you who are high achievers or need to make up for past failures in Defense, there are half-year graduate-level defense courses available after winter break. Yes, Mr. Lestrange?”

Montgomery Lestrange’s hand had gone up. “Where do we sign up, Professor?”

“Sign ups will be available later on in the year. Be aware that signing up is not a guarantee you will be selected - performance in this class will be reviewed and if necessary you will be called in to justify why you signed up,” explained the Professor. 

“For the duels, please split into pairs. Today’s lesson will be entirely practical, getting you back into the stride of using magic regularly. As you are seventeen years of age you are considered adults in the eyes of the wizarding world, but that does not mean you are fully trained and responsible. I hope you have been exercising caution, and if I hear word of one of my students getting into trouble I will be having a talk with that student. Several of you can attest to this.”

Sighs were heard around the classroom.

“I expect you to choose a partner you think has a similar skill level - if I see you deliberately humiliating less gifted students, House points will be taken. Now, you may split.”

Tom’s hand was already closing around Harry’s wrist when Harry started to stand up. “You could’ve asked,” he muttered, but didn’t rip his arm away. Both Slytherins knew that if Harry had wanted to, he could have.

They stood about three metres apart. Harry bowed to Tom, and Tom bowed back. Then they drew their wands.

“Alarte Ascendare!” cast Tom.

“Aqua Eructo!” Harry used his beam of water to block Tom’s spell.

The two kept dueling, offensive spells blocked by offensive spells, defensive spells barely needed. Harry was bleeding from his nose, and one of his feet had been turned into a banana, but balancing precariously on one leg he was holding his ground. Tom’s left arm had become impossible to move, but other than that he was okay.

“Boys! Boys!” called Professor Merrythought. “Stop the duel!”

Rather reluctantly, they did.

“Class ended five minutes ago,” she explained, quickly healing the damage each had taken.

With nothing to see, the rest of the class, which had been gathered in a crowd around the dueling pair, wandered off. Tom held out his right hand, and Harry took it. They shook hands. “Good game,” said Tom.

“Good game,” echoed Harry.

In Herbology, they were breeding Devil’s Snare for use protecting wizarding property. The plants were almost conscious - when Harry let out a tendril of magic, he could feel them rustling against it although they barely moved.

“Hello,” he murmured, letting his magic mingle with theirs until they accepted it. He pushed it toward them, letting them absorb it and grow.

“Oh, wonderful job, Mr. Potter!” exclaimed the cheery Professor Beery. “Have you considered becoming a herbologist?”

Harry smiled, and did not respond. In truth, he hadn’t. Plants had been his comfort place as a child, but he didn’t think he wanted to spend his life growing them as a career. 

History of Magic was every bit as boring as Orion had said. Professor Binns was an elderly wizard who only cared for the Goblin Wars; a subject on which he droned on, and on, and on, and was still going past the time they were supposed to leave. “Professor?” called Harry, but Binns ignored him. “Professor.”

“Do wait until the end of the lecture,” Binns muttered, then returned to his endless spiel. 

“Come on,” said Tom, pulling him by the end, “it’s not worth it. Just come.”

The Charms Professor for seventh year was a young man, who appeared to be half-Goblin. Professor Flitwick told them he taught at Hogwarts over the school year, and was a regular competitor at Dueling Competitions. He was currently studying Dueling Theory for the Dueling Theory TOAD (Terribly Onerous Abstruse Desideratum) he needed to enter global tournaments.

Tom told Harry, privately and while demonstrating the Silencing Charm, that Professor Flitwick was a junior professor who only taught sixth and seventh year classes because he wasn’t yet trusted to handle the lives of eleven year olds. The Charms Master of Hogwarts handled those.

Transfiguration was taught by auburn-haired Professor Dumbledore, who didn’t seem to like Tom. In fact he seemed to positively abhor the Slytherin, taking every opportunity to prove him wrong! Not that those opportunities came often - Tom was, more often than not, in the right, not even Dumbledore’s genius could disprove him. 

Grindelwald had warned Harry about Albus Dumbledore. He didn’t want Harry getting too close to the Light wizard - Dumbledore had been his lover and partner, and had turned on him in the end. That was one of the only times he’d seen the Dark wizard cry.

“Does anyone know what can cause a Transfiguration to fail?” asked Dumbledore. Tom’s hand went up.

“Anyone?” asked Dumbledore. Tom sat patiently, his eyes locked on Dumbledore’s.

“Mr. Riddle,” sighed Dumbledore. “What can cause a Transfiguration to fail?”

“Most commonly, lack of focus or clarity about what the object is,” Tom said, his voice smooth. Harry thought that voice would sound better if it was purring into his ear in bed.

“That… is correct, Mr. Riddle,” Dumbledore said. “What were you taught in First Year about the key to a successful Transfiguration?”

Tom’s hand went up along with most of the others in the class. Harry wasn’t sure what the Hogwarts students had been taught in entry-level Transfiguration, so he kept his hand down.

Dumbledore scoured the room. “Mr. Potter,” he said, settling on a face Harry had been trying to ignore. 

“Visualization,” said Charlus Potter.

“Excellent answer!” Dumbledore clapped his hands together. “Two points to Gryffindor. Good job, my boy. Excellent work.”

Charlus smirked smugly, looking at Tom, who was gritting his teeth. His eyes grew hard when he saw Harry by Tom’s side.

“Little cousin,” he hissed.

“Leave me alone,” Harry replied.

“Five points from Slytherin for talking during class,” said Dumbledore. “Please try to restrain yourselves.”

Harry left Transfiguration with his fingernails cutting into his palms. “That Dumbledore!” he hissed out.

“I know. He’s a Slytherin-hating bastard,” Tom muttered.

Potions was an interesting affair. The Professor was a pot-bellied man named Horace Slughorn.

“Welcome to Advanced Potions,” Slughorn announced when everyone had come in. “Please get out your books and turn to the pages on the Draught of Peace. Ingredients are in the back room, please be respectful when you go, don’t injure anyone now! When your potion is complete, bottle it using the glass bottles stored in the Bottle Rack. Leave a sample on my desk, labeled with the date, name of the potion, and your name. If you need help, just ask, and I will assist you.”

The back room turned out to be bigger than the classroom, and was full of ingredients. In bottles, in boxes, hanging from the ceiling and on shelves was anything a Potion maker could want! Unicorn hair, dragon scales, Acromantula venom, fairy wings, morning dew, petals and pollen of various flowers, porcupine quills, moonstone! 

Harry collected his moonstone, a bit of chopped unicorn horn (a whole unicorn horn was not necessary for the Draught of Peace, and even though unicorns shed and regrew their horns every summer after foaling season, if everyone who needed a bit of unicorn horn used a whole one there would be an incredible demand for poached horns) and handful of porcupine quills before heading back to his Potions station. He filled his cauldron partway with water as the book instructed, then, as the water heated over an open flame, ground up his moonstone. He measured it, and dropped the required amount in, stirring with a bronze Potions spoon until the moonstone was evenly dispersed in the water. Then, he ground the horn and chopped the quills. Dumping that in, he stirred again, funneling his magic into the potion. The book said to do this every five minutes, but Harry had enough control to feed the potion less magic, continually.

At the end of the lesson his potion was the perfect pearly silver, and gleamed brighter than everyone else’s - including Tom’s. The older Slytherin stared at Harry’s potion, mouth hanging the slightest bit open in surprise.

“Mr. Potter!” Slughorn bustled over while Harry was bottling his potion. It took five bottles, one of which was for Slughorn. “What skill!” He leaned a little closer to Harry, and murmured “I’m having a little dinner on Friday at six - a get together with some graduates and some of the more promising students. Tom here will be there. You should come, meet some up and coming experts in quite a few fields… the Appleby Arrows’ Seeker will be there, and a senior advisor to the Minister…”

Harry nodded. “Okay, then!”

When Slughorn had gone away, and students were filing out of the classroom, Tom turned to Harry.

“You agreed,” he said, laughter in his eyes. “Slughorn’s parties are incredibly boring - but they are opportunities to network. He likes future famous people, and being spoiled by famous people.”

Harry glanced at Slughorn out of the corner of his eye. “Oh really?”

“You’ll see,” promised Tom.

That evening, in Astronomy, they were looking at the planets.

“Mercury and Mars aligned not long ago,” intoned Professor Ersatz. “Bitter enemies have come into contact… and with Mercury and Mars, is Venus - love, beauty, relationships. This will be an interesting year, my students. An interesting year…”

“Bitter enemies have come into contact?” Harry snorted. 

“This class is ridiculous,” Tom agreed. “Professor Ersatz is teaching astrology - not astronomy.”

That night, Harry scooped up his snake, Asmodeus, and set him on his stomach. 

“Hello,” he whispered to the snake. One of his tutors, an Egyptian wizard, had taught him parseltongue, a language commonly spoken in countries like Egypt where snakes weren’t considered Dark, and parselmagic was used to set wards and enchantments.

“Hello, Harry,” the snake replied. “You have remembered me.”

“Of course I remembered you! How could I forget?”

Asmodeus huffed. “Silly human.”

Harry ran his hand down the snake’s back. Asmodeus hissed in pleasure. “If I am a silly human, you must be sillier to stay with me,” Harry hissed. He wasn’t really being cruel - he was just teasing Asmodeus. The snake held his head up, and slithered in a circle before laying his head down.

Harry fell asleep that night with Asmodeus curled on his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed!   
> Leaving comments and kudos makes me write faster.. just saying.  
> Love you guys  
> ~ivory


	8. The Montgomery Incident

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Montgomery is a bit too forward with a few too many of the wrong people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: threat of non-con, mild torture

Harry went to bed early on Tuesday. When he got to the seventh year dorms, the green and silver curtains around Tom’s bed were drawn, concealing whatever Tom might be doing inside. 

Montgomery Lestrange was sitting on the edge of his bed, swinging his legs on the edge. “Hadrian,” he said.

“Hello,” greeted Harry, tugging his tie off.

“Say Hadrian,” started Montgomery, standing up and walking awfully close to Harry, his breath a breeze on Harry’s skin, “are you up for some fun tonight?”

Harry blinked. “What? A party? I thought Slughorn’s parties were on Fridays.”

“You could call it a party.” Montgomery’s smile was lazy, sliding across his cheek like a stain spreading on someone else’s mail.

“Um. Who else is going?”

Montgomery was leaning even closer. His warmth reached Harry, wafting onto him, a current of mud stirred up into a clear river.

“Just me and you so far, Hadrian,” Montgomery breathed. His breath was musky, with a slight resemblance to stale bread. “We could invite Cassiopeia… Druella never agrees…”

“Wait-” Montgomery stopped Harry’s failed sentence with a hand slapped over his mouth. 

“Come on, Hadrian,” whispered Montgomery, and Harry was sure the hand he felt sliding over the cup of his arse was intentional.

He mumbled something into Montgomery’s hand, trying to get his teeth out far enough to bite, but all they did was scrape the other boy’s skin and coat his lips in saliva.

“Mmm, no teeth, Hadrian,” Montgomery said. “Not for you. I know you’ll enjoy it.”

Harry squeaked in alarm. Montgomery had him trapped, one muscular arm wrapped around his torso, pinning Harry’s own arms in place, one hand over his mouth.

He wasn’t as trapped as he had thought, Harry realized, and delivered a swift knee to Montgomery’s groin. It had the desired effect: Montgomery squealed like an injured pig and fell backwards.

There was the sound of a book slamming, and Tom’s curtains rippled.

A moment later the other Slytherin was standing between Harry and Montgomery, snapping “Incarcerous!” and “Silencio!”

“Harry,” said Tom, wrapping his arms around Harry. “Did he touch you.”

It wasn’t really a question and Harry knew it.

“Only a little. Not really!” he was quick to add.

“Montgomery Lestrange,” hissed Tom, eyes narrowing into slits, voice so serpentine it was almost Parseltongue. “How dare you touch what is mine?”

The idea of being a possession - Tom’s or anyone’s - filled Harry with a deep revulsion and disgust. He was a wizard, not an object! But he had to admit, Tom’s possessiveness was damn hot.

Tom’s firm arse was delectable, and so was the veiw Tom gave him of it when he prowled around Montgomery, growling at him, wand trained on him. Harry could practically feel the power crackling off Tom’s very being, magical strength leaving the room awash in a blaze of Tom’s anger.

“I should kill you,” Tom was saying. “I should kill you now, for daring to touch what is mine! What belongs to me! Do not beg ignorance, Montgomery Lestrange, or I should kill you for lying to me. Do not forget whose you are. Do not forget that you do not belong to yourself, you gave that right up when you sold yourself.”

Montgomery, under the influence of Tom’s spellwork, could not move or talk.

“You forget yourself. I am not in a forgiving mood. What do you deserve, I wonder? Imperio!”

Harry stared. The Imperius Curse was illegal in Britain! Very Illegal. If anyone found out what Tom had done, he’d be imprisoned for life.

“Diffindo!” The curse narrowly avoiding Montgomery himself, instead destroying the ropes holding him still. Montgomery tried to run, but Tom bared his teeth. “You will not run, Montgomery Lestrange. You will take what I have to give! And you will appreciate my gift.”

Montgomery bowed his head in response.

“Avis!” said Tom, conjuring a flock of sparrows. He flicked his wand at Montgomery, and -

“Mangero Yeux!”

The birds swooped in on Montgomery’s face, pecking and tweeting, and when Tom swiped his wand and deConjured them, Montgomery’s eyes were reduced to unseeing, twitching, bundles of nerves.

Harry almost threw up.

“Tom!” he shouted. “Tom, no!”

Tom didn’t respond, so Harry dashed in front of him, grasping his wand hand. “Don’t,” Harry pleaded. “Please stop now!”

Tom looked between Harry and the bleeding Montgomery, wrinkles between his beautiful eyes. Eventually, he brought his wand down. “Only for you,” he muttered.

“Thank you,” said Harry, relief washing through him like a river with a dam just destroyed.

Tom brought his hands around Harry’s waist and kissed him roughly, leaving Harry’s lips puffy and red. Harry moaned into the kiss, pressing into Tom.

They broke apart only when the stench of raw flesh reached them.

Tom sighed. “You can’t leave him like that,” Harry reminded him.

Tom shrugged. “I can… I shouldn’t.”

He waved his wand, reversing the damage. Then he cast something Harry didn’t know on Montgomery’s eyes.

“What’s that?” Harry asked.

Tom smirked, a glint in his eye.

“Every time he disrespects me, his eyes will burn. If he keeps doing so, he will be temporarily blind.”

“That’s evil!” gasped Harry, but found he didn’t mind. 

Tom kissed him again. “There’s just one thing I need to add,” he murmured against Harry’s lips. “Well, two.”

“Two?” Harry mumbled back, dazed and distracted by the expert touch Tom manipulated him with.

Tom cast a Tongue-Tying Hex on Montgomery, then turned back to Harry. “He’s dealt with. Now for the second thing…”

He leaned over Harry, pressing his lips to Harry’s neck, and sucking, almost chewing - scratch that, he kind of was chewing - on the tender skin there. When he pulled away, there was a red and swollen mark there. 

“”What did you do?” Harry asked warily. Tom brought him to the mirror.

Harry screeched when he saw it. “Everyone will know!” he said.

“As they ought to. You are mine, Harry Potter, and no one else’s.”

Harry leaned back into Tom’s touch. “Possessive bastard. You make it hard to hate you.”

“Hard to hate me, hmm?” Tom mumbled into Harry’s hair. “If you hate me, why do you keep letting me kiss and fuck you?”

“Don’t push your luck,” Harry warned, but there was humour in his tone.

“Speaking of fucking. How is your stomach? You were hurt, I recall.”

Harry flushed, bright red spreading from his cheeks to his chest. “It… still hurts. Less now, more just achy, like I was punched yesterday. You care about that?”

Tom refused to answer, instead guiding Harry to Tom’s bed. “You should have that seen to,” he said. “You are too talented to let die.”

“You think I’m talented?” asked Harry, letting Tom lift him onto the bed. “High praise.”

“I’m not stupid,” said Tom. “I saw you, today and yesterday. We have the same classes, Harry. Well, except you’re taking Divination-”

“I just need the grade,” Harry put in, “I don’t really believe it!”

“Anyway, you’re taking Divination and I’m taking Ancient Runes, but everything else we’ve got together. And I’ve seen you there. You were right. Your practical knowledge is excellent. Your theoretical side could use work, though.”

“Oi!” Harry complained.

Tom sighed, settling on the bed and wrapping his arm around Harry, who lay with his head on his chest.

A moment later the dorm door opened. Tom held up his finger to Harry’s lips. Harry licked it, and Tom stared.

“Montgomery!” said the voice of Abraxas Malfoy. “Hello!”

“Abraxas!” Montgomery said. “Want to play?”

“Sure,” purred Abraxas.

Harry exchanged glances with Tom. Tom’s eyes were shining with amusement.

They heard a drawer being opened, then closed. Something clicked, and Abraxas moaned.

Two bright pink spots appeared on Harry’s cheeks as he realized what they were about to witness. ‘Merlin, he recovers fast,’ he thought, very loudly in the way he had done before to communicate with Tom.

‘Yes, he does.’ Tom replied, confirming that Harry had succeeded in reaching through their mental link.

‘Tell me about this soulmate thing,’ Harry requested. ‘Have you found anything out yet?’

They heard the sound of leather slapping skin, and Abraxas whining in pain. “More!” the Malfoy begged.

‘Soulmate bonds only happen in very powerful, strong wixen,’ Tom told Harry. ‘We must be very powerful indeed for this to have happened.’

Harry looked up at the person whose shoulder he had been resting his head on, and smirked.

‘There is also,’ continued Tom, ‘a compatibility between our magics to allow our bonding. This means that any spells we combine our power on will have the full strength of both of us, there will be no magic wasted in uniting the two magics. There is also a small possibility, with soul bonds like this, of pregnancy. I learnt a contraception charm!’

Harry raised his eyebrows. ‘You think we’ll be needing a contraception charm?’

Tom smirked. ‘I think we’re powerful enough.’

‘Arrogant bastard. You know that’s not what I meant.’

The out-loud sounds were now loud enough to distract the two from their conversation. And what sounds they were!

Harry cast a whispered Muffliato around the bed he and Tom were in, followed by a Notice-Me-Not. He poked his head out of the confines of the curtains, inhaling sharply when he saw the kinky sight. He didn’t think he’d ever been so grateful for a Muffliato in his life.

Abraxas Malfoy, the Pureblood heir, Primary Heir Apparent of the House of Malfoy, was on his hands and knees, a cock ring around the base of his straining erection. He was naked apart from the handcuffs keeping his hands tied together and the studded leather collar around his neck. There was a lead attached to the collar, Abraxas was tied to the foot of Montgomery’s bed.

Montgomery stood behind Abraxas, a whip discarded on the floor next to him. In his hand was a paddle, which he was slapping Abraxas’ already bright red arse with.

He was also naked, except he was still wearing socks and shoes. While Harry watched, Montgomery prowled around the front of Abraxas, giving the Malfoy a break from the paddle. “Slut,” sneered Montgomery. “Suck my dick.”

Abraxas’ watermelon-red mouth opened, taking half of Montgomery’s length. Montgomery thrust, jostling Abraxas so he almost lost his balance, shoving the rest of his cock in Abraxas’ mouth.

“Don’t deny me, you whore,” Montgomery growled, hips rocking.

The sight had Harry himself quite aroused. His own cock soon popped up, blood pumping through it.

“Interested?” chuckled Tom from behind him.

Harry’s ears flamed. He nodded.

“Unfortunate I can’t have you until you get that problem seen to,” mused Tom, his hand sliding over Harry’s round arse.

Harry sighed. The sex they’d successfully had before had been wonderful. But he knew it was for the better: mind-blowing pain and a mind-blowing orgasm couldn’t co-occur.

He probably should have his tender stomach seen to. But then, it had been steadily getting better. It was, in all likelihood, nothing to worry about. If there really was a problem, he’d find out later. But there wasn’t a problem. Harry usually noticed when he was sick, and this wasn’t that.

Maybe it was nerves.

It was nerves. Starting a new school was a scary thing, especially when you’d been warned about the headmaster ever since you turned eleven and were kidnapped by a crazy man with white hair who told you you were a wizard.

Tom waved his wand, closing the curtains where Harry had been looking, and patted the space beside him. Harry crawled to fill it, settling down into Tom’s side. The other Slytherin was right. Their magic felt good when it mingled together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They're happy now ahahahahahaha let's let them have their moment while it lasts
> 
> Ha  
> Ha  
> Ha  
> Ha  
> yes I am evil why are you asking


	9. Some Guys

Footsteps echoed across the floor. “Montgom-ery!” Abraxas gasped between spankings. “Someone’s coming!”

“Go to your own bed!” Montgomery shouted, pushing the blonde boy away.

“I’m tied to you!” 

Harry looked, wide-eyed, at Tom. The crack they were now viewing the spectacle from was barely big enough for both of them to see, so in order to accomplish this he was leaning his forehead on Tom’s.

Montgomery sighed and used his wand to quickly untie Abraxas. “Go!” 

Abraxas didn’t need any more warning. With his wrists still in handcuffs he hurtled, stark naked, into his own bed.

Montgomery sat on the edge of his bed, fiddling with his hair and biting his lip. His demeanor had changed considerably in the past five minutes.

The door cracked open, and Alphard Black stepped in. Seeing Montgomery naked, he stopped short.

“Hey, Montgomery? You know you’re starkers, right?”

Montgomery smiled. “Enjoying the veiw?”

Alphard shrugged. “Aesthetically pleasing, sure. You have nice abs. But Cygnus said you’d asked him to get something from your trunk, and he couldn’t because he’d promised to help a third-year Hufflepuff with her Charms homework. That’s why he asked me.”

Montgomery smirked. “Slytherin, aren’t I? Well, if you are free, and you’re here…” his gaze fell upon the length of rope and the whip which lay abandoned on the floor.

Alphard looked from the instruments to Montgomery and back again. “Look. I told you before. I’m ace. I don’t like men. I don’t like women. I don’t like you. Anyway, I thought you were with Abraxas!”

Montgomery’s jaw fell open. “We were discrete!” he cried.

Alphard snorted, gesturing to the rope, whip, and various other ‘toys’ around them. “Discrete? You call this mess ‘discrete’?”

A frustrated, hurt cry came from the bed Harry assumed was Abraxas’. “I thought he was with me too!”

Alphard sighed. “Abraxas?”

Abraxas poked his head out, handcuffed wrists visible as they supported him.

Alphard folded his arms. “I’m disappointed in you, Montgomery. You left your lover like that to seduce me when I have already told you no? Childish. Even if I wanted sex, it wouldn’t be with you.”

Montgomery looked down. “Alphard - Abraxas - I can explain!”

Alphard stared, his gaze so stony it could Petrify a basilisk. “Primary Heir Apparent Lestrange, I’m disappointed in you. You taint your family name with this behavior. If this got out, it would be devastating, and Lord and Lady Lestrange would not be able to show their faces in public for months, or however long it takes for another scandal to capture the world’s attention! A Black and Lestrange partnership would greatly benefit both Houses, but if you continue on like this I can assure you it won’t be happening. I may not be the Primary Heir but I can speak for our House’s motives and House Black will not disgrace itself by associating with a common whore.”

“Common whore!” Montgomery’s eyes bulged.

Alphard’s expression did not change. “Indeed. And don’t dare deny it, you know as well as I that you are not averse to associate in certain ways with people other than your current lover. After all, you just propositioned me!”

Tom’s arm flashed out, wrapping around Harry’s shoulder. “Protective much?” Harry murmured, green eyes alight with amusement.

Tom’s own silver eyes darkened. “And why would that be,” he hissed.

Harry smiled. “I think you like _like_ me, don’t you, Tom?”

Tom scowled. “I do not!”

Harry recoiled. “But you-”

“I do not fall victim to such childish affections! I am more than that! I am not a lovestruck fool, I am not a puppet, I am not wrapped around the little finger of an emotion! I hold no delusions of romance - Harry, I am - I do not - fool! I am more than that! I am not so Gryffindor - no, worse! Hufflepuff - to believe in such things. Do not twist my words and spin my tongue in circles. You cheat me with my own words!”

“What? Tom! Tom!” Harry cried. But Tom was already leaping up and dashing away, his beautiful face twisted in something that looked like pain.

Betrayal sunk what had been contentment like a body tied down with stones. Harry slid out of Tom’s bed, and crumpled to the floor like a dirty old plastic bag, torn and stained.

“Hadrian? Tom?” Montgomery’s eyes darted around the room. “You were listening! You were eavesdropping on me?”

Tom slammed the door behind him and was gone. Abraxas’ face had gone bright red all the way up to the roots of his white-blonde hair.

Alphard lost none of his composure. “Such drama,” he sneered, “it is unbefitting for persons of your status. On behalf of all of you, I am embarrassed, and can only hope you manage to keep this behavior behind closed doors.”

“I don’t have to listen to you!” snapped Montgomery. “You are a but a jumped-up child, not even from your family’s primary Line. You have nothing on me. I am set to inherit and you? You will live as the spinster uncle in a small, previously unused family property.”

“There is nothing wrong with not marrying and having children,” frowned Alphard. “Those are not the only ways to find fulfillment. And sex may be your main pursuit but it is not mine.”

Montgomery glared at Alphard. “If I didn’t love you - and damn it I love you - I’d be so angry with you!”

At these words, Abraxas seemed to collapse even further in on himself. Tears dripped down his cheeks, and he could not lift a hand to rub them away, because he was still restrained. Overtaken by a surge of pity for the other boy, Harry made his way across the room, and slipped under the curtains around Abraxas’ bed. “I’ll untie you,” he offered.

“Thank you,” Abraxas whispered, the words dislodging whatever was keeping a waterfall of ugly crying back. He sobbed brokenly as Harry fiddled with the robes and handcuffs keeping him bound.

“I’m so, so sorry,” Harry said, his voice soft and laced with pity. “You must be devastated.”

Abraxas nodded. Neither wanted to leave the comfort of Abraxas’ bed, so he was still naked. He wrapped himself in the cover. “You, too,” he said. “Tom… I don’t know where that came from but he… he said some hurtful things to you and I’m sorry you had to hear it.”

“Some guys, huh?” Harry said.

“Some guys are proper bastards who can’t keep it in their pants but won’t admit to fancying you. Gits!”

Harry sighed. “They are, aren’t they?”

Abraxas stared at the curtain as if he could look through it. “They really can be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry: so are we dating  
> Tom: if you want to be I guess
> 
> LATER
> 
> Tom: you're mine  
> Harry: your boyfriend?  
> Tom: boyfriend? I don't have those feelings
> 
> you darling hypocrite, Tom, just admit you like him.


	10. Realization

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry finds out.

Harry lay in bed, slumped against the pillows, with absolutely no desire to get out of bed. Something was off today. He was always ready, veins buzzing with energy… but not today.

“Harry! You have to get up!” Tom sounded annoyed. “We will leave without you!”

That was quite the threat. Because of the way the Slytherins moved about, in one large group, Harry being left behind would mean he couldn’t have breakfast, and couldn’t leave the dorms until it was time for his first class.

Harry flopped over. He was hungry, but the bed was so comfortable…

“Harry! If you will not get up this instant I shall summon Walburga!”

Harry ignored Tom’s angry threat, squeezing his eyes shut to avoid the light.

Tom vanished, and Abraxas appeared, leaning over Harry. “Are you okay?” Abraxas asked.

“I’m fine,” snapped Harry, “just tired. Will everyone leave me be!”

“This isn’t like you,” Abraxas said, sounding honestly concerned. “You’ve been here two weeks and every day you’ve been up at the crack of dawn.”

“Well, not today,” snarled Harry, rolling over so his head was pointed away from Abraxas.

A moment later he was confronted with a shrill “Hadrian James Potter! What is this I hear about you refusing to get out of bed?”

“Go away!” shouted Harry. “Leave me alone!”

“Tom, Abraxas… leave me with him,” said Walburga. “He likes Orion, yeah? That might calm him down.”

“Stop talking about me like I’m an object!” screamed Harry. “I am not!”

“Harry,” said Walburga gently. “Are you feeling all right?”

“‘M fine,” mumbled Harry, breathing hard from the shouting he’d been doing. Tiredness clouded his head. He wasn’t even sure why he had been so angry in the first place.

“I know you hate it, but I heard what Abraxas said and he does have a point. This isn’t like you. Do you think you could be coming down with something?”

“I’m not sick,” said Harry. “I don’t get sick.”

Walburga sat on the edge of the bed. “Well, at least come to breakfast. It’s Friday. Get through today, and you can have a nice, long lie in tomorrow.”

“I want a lie in now.” His body ached for sleep, and the warmth of the sheets was like a hug, soft and comforting.

Walburga smiled, sliding her arm under his shoulders and pulling him up toward her. She was surprisingly strong for a witch of her stature. “Come on, now.”

Harry sighed, and stumbled to his feet, leaning against Walburga. “I want to sleep,” he complained.

“I know you want to sleep,” said Walburga. “Unfortunately, you have class in an hour and you’ve got to eat before then.”

Reluctantly, Harry got dressed in his uniform. He still hadn’t figured out the art of tying his own tie, so Walburga did it for him.

She herded him out of his dorm room and down the stairs. His legs ached just walking down them, he dreaded the inevitable trip back up in the evening.

Harry and Walburga were the last to arrive before Slytherin House left for the Great Hall. Walburga wasn’t satisfied, however, to leave it at that. With Harry in tow, she marched over to Tom, the self-declared leader of the students of Slytherin House (and to be fair, he was the Head Boy and did, in fact, regularly attend Prefect meetings and represent students at teacher meetings).

“Did you keep him up last night?” Walburga hissed, glaring at Tom.

“I did not! You know I was busy then, patrolling the halls! Those young Gryffindors cannot be trusted - they get more rambunctious every year! I swear, at some point at the future they’ll cause serious injury to someone if left unchecked and it’ll probably be a Slytherin or Hufflepuff.” Tom ranted. Clearly, his ordeal with sleepy Harry had left him in a foul temper.

“You didn’t wake him when you returned?”

Tom growled at her, and led the group up to the Great Hall at an ungodly pace. The younger years were having to jog to keep up!

Harry trailed behind the rest, exhaustion written on his every expression. Walburga dropped back to join him and, when he noticed what was going on, so did Orion.

“Harry?” Orion said, sounding concerned. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine!” Harry snapped back.

“Grouchy when you’re tired, then? Lucretia too. She gets ridiculous when you make her wake up any earlier than she’s ready!” Orion smiled at Harry.

Harry frowned. “Are you saying I’m ridiculous?”

“A bit,” Orion conceded.

Harry sighed heavily, his shoulders slumping.

The day dragged on, ever so slowly. Harry felt like he was trapped in a bubble, looking down on the world through an impenetrable shield, not quite able to touch anything. He floated above reality, stumbling from class to class, his hands slurring words on parchment as he tried to take notes. Eventually he gave up trying.

The next morning started out much the same way. Walburga was sent to rouse him, Tom avoided him like the plague. Walburga dragged him to the Great Hall.

It hit him like a shockwave.

Harry clamped his hand over his nose and mouth. The smell was awful! Absolutely horrendous! His stomach rolled, and he froze, trying not to vomit on his shoes.

“Harry?” Orion was in front of him, and Walburga was to his side, with her arm wrapped reassuringly around him. “What’s wrong?”

Harry tried to talk, but drawing breath to fuel his words just made it worse. He hunched over, trying to keep the vomit off his clothes. It stung his throat, and it should have been a proper wake-up call, but Harry just wanted to curl up in bed and stay there forever.

“Scourgify!” cast Orion, eliminating the stinking mess. “Harry, what is it? Something’s not right.”

Harry leaned into Walburga. “I think you were right,” he mumbled. “I am coming down with something.”

“And you will go, right this instant, to Madam Curador!”

“I will not! I’ll be fine in a few days, you’ll see.”

Walburga sighed. “All right, but if you’re not, I will drag you there.”

Harry nodded in acquiescence. The motion just made him even more nauseous. 

Walburga and Orion brought him over to the Slytherin table and sat him down. Walburga offered him dry toast, which he reluctantly took. After handing it to him, she felt his forehead. “You’re not feverish,” she said as she sat down.

Orion sat next to Harry. “Make him eat,” Walburga said.

“I will,” Orion promised.

“I’m not a baby!” Harry protested, but the stubborn Blacks would hear nothing of it.

The next few mornings were nothing better. Walburga kept hovering over Harry, growing increasingly concerned as Harry’s exhaustion and nausea did not improve. Where she could not go, areas like the boys’ bathroom, she would send Orion! 

Harry was getting very annoyed with the two of them but no matter what threat he snapped out or how much he shouted at them to leave him alone, they would not.

Somehow, he found that comforting.

And Tom! Tom hadn’t spoken to him even once since this miserable illness had started. 

Harry was missing the other boy’s company. He felt it as an ache, loneliness threatening to cut off his air supply.

But he was too proud to beg.

It didn’t help that for the past twenty-four hours, Tom had been throwing him suspicious glances and consulting a book he never seemed to put down.

Eventually Walburga put her foot down.

“Come on,” she said briskly, hauling Harry to his feet. “You are coming to the hospital wing!”

“I don’t need to go,” complained Harry.

Walburga stuck her chin out. “Yes, you do.” And she dragged him all the way to the castle’s hospital wing.

The hospital wing was a cheerful place, with flowers on almost every surface, and long windows with sunlight spilling through them. It was painted a very light purple, almost white, and although the bedspreads were white, some of the windows were angled such that rainbows fell across the sheets.

“Ah, Miss Black, Mr. Potter!” greeted Madam Curador, who was watering a potted aloe vera plant. “What can I do for you today?”

Harry scuffed his feet and said nothing.

“Harry here has been feeling poorly,” Walburga said.

“Ah, I see! It is getting to that season. Never you worry, I’ll soon have you fixed up!”

Madam Curador pointed at one of the beds by the long windows. “Have a seat over there, there’s a good chap.”

Harry did, and Walburga went with him. “I’m quite worried about him, Madam Curador,” she said. “He has been awfully sick.”

“You should have come sooner!” exclaimed the mediwitch.

“That’s what I said,” Walburga frowned, crossing her arms.

Madam Curador drew her wand, and performed a series of scans. “Negative, negative, negative,” she was mumbling to herself. Eventually she sighed. “I’ll just do a blanket test, this’ll catch whatever it is.”

She did, waving her wand in an elaborate motion. A piece of parchment popped into existence with a shimmer of sparks, and quickly she snatched it out of the air.

As she read, her eyebrows disappeared into her hairline.

“Ex-excuse me,” she stammered, and her face had gone quite pale. “I must go and-”

Walburga ran up behind her and grasped her arm. “What is it, Madam? Is he very sick? What can we do?”

The mediwitch shook her head. “He is not in imminent danger, Miss Black, he is not - does not appear to be sick at all…”

But she did not finish that thought, instead hurrying off toward Headmaster Dippet’s office.

Walburga returned to Harry’s side. His eyes had gone round and wide with fear. “What is it?” he asked. “Did she tell you?”

Walburga shook her head. “She did not, but she didn’t think you’re sick… she said you weren’t, anyway.”

“But I am, I’ve been sick for days!” 

“I know,” said Walburga. “I’ll find out what’s going on, Harry. You’re pretty much my cousin, through your Black ancestry, and I treasure you as a family member. I know Orion considers you one - did he not welcome you as a Friend to House Black?”

“He did, yeah,” said Harry, smiling faintly as he thought of his friend.

The door to the hospital wing opened, and Harry and Walburga looked up, thinking Madam Curador had returned. She hadn’t.

Tom stepped nervously into the hospital wing, twisting his fingers together. “Harry,” he said, “I’ve been doing more of that research, and I’m fairly sure-”

He was cut off by the arrival of Madam Curador and Headmaster Dippet. “Tell him, Cherish, he has to know, and as school mediwitch it should come from you,” Headmaster Dippet was saying.

“Mr. Potter,” said Madam Curador gravely, “the medical scan I performed brought to my attention that you are pregnant.”

That was the last thing he had anticipated hearing. He stayed stock-still for about thirty seconds, processing it, the words echoing through his head, and when the fact had settled in he leaped to his feet.

“Pregnant!” he shouted. “That shouldn’t even be possible!”

He was reminded of what Tom had said the other day, when they’d still been getting along. The soul bond. Their magical power.

“Oh, Merlin,” he said, looking down at himself.

Then he looked up, and locked eyes with Tom.

“You got me pregnant?!” he screeched.

Madam Curador, Headmaster Dippet, and Walburga all hurried out, muttering things like ‘come back later’ and ‘let them sort it out’ and ‘out of the firing zone’ under their breaths.

“I didn’t know,” said Tom. “Really, Harry, I had no idea it was possible until very recently!”

Harry’s face was red with anger. “You knocked me up!” he shouted, in a voice that was almost incredulous. “You - you knocked me up! And then you ignored me and now you’re here? You couldn’t handle me when I was being sick because of what you did and now you’re back! Do you expect me to forgive you? You even mentioned the possibility, and you didn’t think that I might - that you might - ah!”

“I really didn’t know,” Tom insisted. “She confirmed it?”

“Of course she confirmed it!” Harry screamed. “I’m pregnant, there’s a fucking baby in my belly, I’m up the duff, I’m expecting, I’ve got a bun in the oven, I’m with child, I’m - I’m in the family way, I’m preggers - I’ve run out of ways to say it but it’s all your fault!”

Tom opened his mouth to speak, but Harry didn’t give him the chance.

“Do you have any idea how awful I’ve been feeling? No! No you don’t! And you know why? It’s because you’ve been avoiding me, haven’t you? Hmm? You know it’s true, so don’t bother lying about it, you foul - you’re a right bastard! Knock a guy up and abandon him!”

“It’s confirmed?” repeated Tom. “It’s confirmed. You’re having a baby. My baby.”

“No thanks to you!”

“You’re having my baby,” mumbled Tom. “We’re having a baby.”

Harry crossed his arms. “I see no ‘we’ feeling sick every minute of every hour of every day. I see no ‘we’ vomiting multiple times a day. I see no ‘we’ not being able to tolerate those stupid, stupid potatoes. I see no ‘we’ falling asleep in class! _I’m_ having a baby, Tom Riddle - you’re fine.”

“You’re doing all the work, yes… and Harry, I… I’ll help you, I promise… but it will be mine. I’m going… I’m going to be a father,” Tom whispered in wonder.

“Yeah, well, for that you’re going to have to keep me alive, and I feel like death incarnate,” snarled Harry. After a few seconds his expression melted into something quite different. Death. Death. Death! Merlin no!

“What if - what if our baby doesn’t make it? I’m male. My body isn’t designed for this… what if I can’t keep it? What if I’m not good enough?” His shoulders shook, and it wasn’t with anger.

Tom crossed the room to stand in front of Harry. “Listen to me. You will be okay. Your magic wouldn’t have facilitated it if you weren’t capable of carrying this child to term.”

Harry nodded mutely. All his fury with Tom had melted away, peeling off him like old glue, and he felt it should be there, but it wasn’t, and Tom was so alluring with his shining eyes and handsome face. He didn’t have to be angry with him… and he wasn’t anymore. He wasn’t sure he could find that anger again if he tried. “But… but what if I’m not good enough even then,” he argued. “What if I fail?”

Shock and sadness hit him like a wave crashing onto a rocky beach, and he sat on the bed with the hollow thud of his thighs hitting the metal bed frame. It hurt, but compared to turmoil in his chest, it was nothing.

“You won’t,” Tom promised, sitting beside Harry. “You won’t. And I will be with you. Every step of the way. I’ve always wanted a family. I grew up alone. Did you know that? I was born and raised in an orphanage. Now, I’m going to be a father. I’m not sure how good I’ll be at it, I’ve - I’ve done some pretty horrible things, and maybe I’m not capable of loving a child, but I will try.”

Harry swallowed. He hadn’t known that. Now that he’d cooled off a bit, the nausea was back full-swing. He rested his head on Tom’s shoulder, wishing it would go away, haplessly rubbing his still-flat belly to try and calm it.

“Are you feeling sick?” Tom asked, noticing the movement.

“Yeah,” Harry whispered. The snarky comment he’d thought up melted away like butter on his tongue. And Tom was holding him… it felt so good...

Tom gently pushed him onto the bed. “Lay with me,” he said. “I’ve got you… you’ve got our baby…”

Tom slid his arm around Harry, coaxing the ebony-haired boy into letting him cuddle around him, and brought his hand onto Harry’s belly, rubbing it in soothing circles.

Harry was still trying to be angry with Tom. He still felt betrayed by his absence. But he was here now, and Harry yearned for his presence, yearned for his touch, his voice.

As if sensing his thoughts - which, given their mind link, he might have been - Tom tightened his arm around Harry.


	11. Two-Faced

Harry awoke to sunlight streaming in through windows he was sure weren’t in the Slytherin dorms, and the feel of a warm body pressed up against him.

He tried to roll over, but an arm tightened around him, He looked over to see Tom Riddle, his hair in disarray, his robes askew, with serene blue eyes wide open and looking at him.

“How long have you been watching me sleep?” Harry asked.

“Long enough.” Tom replied.

“You’re a creep,” Harry accused.

A smile tugged at the corners of Tom’s lips. “Maybe I am,” he said.

Harry slumped back down, his head lolling to the side. He groaned as the familiar queasiness coiled within him.

“Harry?” said Tom, concerned.

“You’re awfully worried about me now,” Harry said, yawning at the end of his sentence.

Tom set his warm hand on Harry’s still-flat belly. “You’re carrying my heir.”

“Is that the only reason?”

Tom sighed and did not answer.

Harry was disappointed by that, but at least Tom was here. He clutched onto Tom, revelling in the feeling of his soulmate’s soothing magic. It didn’t ease the nausea, but it calmed some wild desperation in his head.

Tom shifted to scoop Harry into his arms. “You’re awfully light,” he noted, getting up and leaning against the hospital wing wall with Harry cradled to his chest.

Harry shrugged. “I didn’t eat well until I was eleven.”

Tom frowned. “You will gain weight. This cannot be healthy.”

Harry wrinkled his nose. “Eating?” He didn’t want to think about that right now. His stomach rolled, threatening disaster.

“Still sick?” Tom stroked Harry’s unruly hair out of his face.

Harry nodded haplessly. “It just won’t go away! From the moment I wake up to when I fall asleep.”

Tom adjusted Harry’s position in his arms. “For how long?”

“Since - around that day you yelled at me?”

“I see,” said Tom, slowly, unsurely. “I’m… sorry that I was angry. I did not realize-”

“This is starting to sound a lot more like an excuse, and a lot less like an apology,” Harry warned. Tom’s shoulders slumped. 

“I’ll stop then.”

Then, the horrible feeling of his body rebelling, retching and choking - he flailed wildly, feeling the first of the vomit reach his mouth. Luckily Tom let him go, and he dashed around, looking for a toilet, somewhere, anywhere - but it was too late. There was more coming up, and then it was dribbling out of his mouth and down his chin and onto his clothes. Harry felt disgusting.

Usually he could at least reach a toilet in time, and he didn’t have to look at what was coming out of him.

He leaned over, to try and stop the worst of it from spilling on him, but he was already spattered in the remains of what he’d had for… he couldn’t even remember the last meal he’d eaten! His memory was clouded and patchy.

As he was doubled over in his misery, Tom reached his side, wand outstretched. “Scourgify,” cast Tom, vanishing the mess Harry had made.

Harry didn’t like looking the fool in front of the handsome boy! If Tom wasn’t so good to press up against, wrap his arms around… Harry might just leave to avoid the embarrassment.

He retched again, throwing up all over the floor. Tears stung his eyes. He hadn’t known this would happen, and… now he was being sick in front of the most beautiful person he’d ever seen… what would Grindelwald think? What if he abandoned Harry to starvation and suffering and injury because of this. Harry would go back to that horrible, horrible place - somewhere he didn’t think about… darkness, and cold, and pain! 

“Harry?” Tom said, voice soft. Harry was hardly listening. He would be taking a child back there, to that hellhole! A child to be hurt and crying for help that never came!

That child would not be rescued on its eleventh birthday as Harry had. There would be no white-haired savior, no being swept away to a kingdom where it was the prince.

Harry had doomed his child!

His child. And wasn’t that a funny thought? He, very male, very young, was going to have a baby.

“Oh Merlin,” he said, before throwing up again.

This was the scene Madam Cherish Curador walked into. She waited until Tom had Harry standing up, and the vomit off the floor, to have her presence known.

“Mr. Potter, you are released from the hospital wing. You will have weekly check-ups, for which we will be Flooing in a specialist from St. Mungo’s. Mr. Riddle may attend, since he is the… father.”

Harry stiffened. He wasn’t going to be a mother! He was going to be a father too!

“Harry is the father as well, Madam Curador,” Tom said smoothly, rubbing his hand along Harry’s back. 

“Of course! It’s just that he is… the maternal father.”

Harry scoffed. ‘Calm down, Harry,’ came Tom’s voice through their link. ‘What she thinks is not important.’

“We’ll be leaving now, then,” said Tom, and wrapped his arm around Harry’s waist, leading him out. 

Harry paused, his hand going to his mouth, and Tom stopped, too, looking him over. “Are you going to be sick again?”

Harry felt like he was, but after a few moments of being frozen, the aching thrash of what felt like writhing serpents in his belly cooled to the movements of a stormy sea. He shook his head.

It was a slow walk to the Slytherin dorms; Harry was tired and aching and bordering on lethargic. “It’s normal for it to be this bad,” Tom told him when they’d stopped for a few minutes to let Harry rest his head on Tom’s shoulder and not worry about walking. “Your body is making a lot of adjustments. It can be bad for women too, but you… your body isn’t designed for carrying a baby.”

“‘S your fault,” muttered Harry. 

“I know,” Tom said. “Sorry. Next time I’ll use a Contraception Charm.”

“You better,” said Harry. “This is enough for me and it’s only been what, three weeks?”

Tom nodded and smiled. “So there will be a next time.”

Harry huffed a laugh. “Yes, I think there will be.”

“Ready to keep going?” asked Tom.

Harry nodded, but leaned into Tom, nuzzling his head into the other boy’s neck.

“Come on, Harry,” said Tom, prying Harry off him. “It’s not far.”

Harry’s head hung down as he walked. He hated being reduced to this.

Eventually they reached the Slytherin common room. Tom booted Lestrange and a cluster of the Black cousins off a couch, then guided Harry to it. Harry reached out and gripped Tom’s arm, pulling him down with him.

Harry snuggled into Tom’s side and basked in the stray magic coming off his skin in whisps.

“I knew it!” exclaimed Orion, grinning. Walburga came up behind her cousin and passed him, going to stand right in front of Tom and Harry.

“So?” she said.

Harry blinked at her. “What?”

“Have you stopped fighting?”

Harry frowned at Tom. “You’d better not be angry still.”

“We weren’t fighting,” defended Tom.

Walburga eyed him with the cool air of a strong woman who knew she was right.

“Men,” said Druella, looking at Walburga with longing in her wide brown eyes.

The ghost of a smile flitted across Walburga’s lips. As soon as it appeared it was gone.

Harry did not want to leave Tom’s side. When he plastered himself against the other boy, he was warm and comfortable.

Tom didn’t seem to mind. He wrapped his arm around Harry’s waist and towed him everywhere. So long as Harry got to lean on Tom and sit on his lap and keep what was almost a high on Tom’s magic, he was fine.

And it was just an added bonus that Tom had a delicious body that Harry could feel every detail of.

There were only two classes where this arrangement proved difficult: Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts. Professor Merrythought liked to have them standing apart, practicing spells, and would not allow Harry to sit on top of Tom at his desk.

“Mr. Riddle is not a chair,” she said.

Professor Slughorn didn’t like Harry’s new seat either. Eventually, Tom convinced Harry to move off him and into the chair next to him so that he could properly brew the potion. Unfortunately it had taken such a long time to convince Harry that their potion ran out of time to brew and had to be bottled half-complete.

Harry was getting quite addicted to Tom’s magic. It felt so good, he never wanted to be apart from it.

When Tom went to bed that night, Harry trailed after him and sat at the foot of Tom’s bed, with a pleading expression on his face. It was the same expression he used to convice Grindelwald that yes, Harry should have a treacle tart for breakfast!

“Oh, all right,” Tom sighed, and Harry climbed into bed beside him.

‘Master?’ came a hiss. Asmodeus’ head appeared over the side of Tom’s bed.

“Harry,” said Tom, “is that snake yours?”

Harry nodded. “His name is Amodeus.”

‘Hello, Asmodeus,’ hissed Tom, his accent flawless.

“The Slytherin Parselmouth thing is real?” he asked. “You didn’t have to learn the language?”

Tom smiled. “I didn’t!”

Harry stared. “I had to spend years studying it, and I’m not even fluent yet!”

Tom looked at him with wide eyes. “You learned Parseltongue?”

Harry nodded. “Yeah. I had a tutor.”

“I thought I was the only Parselmouth in Britain!”

“You are. At least, the only natural Parselmouth. My tutor was foreign, and anyway he wasn’t born into it the way you are, he was just from a culture where some wixen choose to learn it.”

Tom stared. “Salazar never mentioned that in any of his journals!”

“You have Salazar Slytherin’s journals?” Harry gaped.

“Remind me to show you the Chamber of Secrets.”

Harry blinked. “That’s real too?!”

Asmodeus made the snake equivalent of hissing laughter. ‘Yes, Master, I have visited the Queen of Serpents! She mentioned a Speaker.’

‘This is Tom. He is a Speaker.’ hissed Harry.

‘Your Master is my mate,’ Tom told the snake, with a smug little smile on his lips. ‘He is breeding.’

‘Master will have hatchlings! Joyous occasion! Are the eggs in this nest?’

‘No, Asmodeus,’ said Harry. ‘People do not lay eggs. People… people are big eggs.’

‘People are viviparous, like boas,’ Tom explained. ‘My mate grows the hatchling inside his body.’

‘I see. Take good care of my Master and hatchling, Master’s mate. I have sharp fangs!’

He left them to their silence and slithered to the replenishing warming charm Harry had cast for him. 

“Did your snake just threaten me?” asked Tom after a few minutes had passed.

Harry nodded. “I think he did, yeah.”

The next morning Harry woke up to find Tom hissing at his belly.

“It’s a ball of cells, honestly Tom! You’re not going to teach it Parseltongue!”

“It’s my heir,” Tom said. “My child.”

“And mine, or had you forgotten?” Harry didn’t wait for a response. He was now awake enough to recognize the angry churning of his insides and know to rush to the loo.

Tom followed. “Maybe you should be checked, just in case something’s wrong with it.”

“There’s nothing wrong with it, Tom, or Madam Curador would have said something!”

“But just in case! What if it’s not developing properly!”

Harry retched over the toilet bowl again. “Maybe you could stop worrying so much about that, because we know it’s fine, and… I don’t know, start worrying a bit about me? It’s fine. I haven’t been able to eat in three days, Tom! Three days!”

“Maybe that’s because of it! Can we just go and-”

“No we cannot!” Harry glared at Tom, and shoved himself to his feet. Not looking back, he marched away, all the way up to the Room of Requirement.

The Room had a cozy pile of pillows that Harry nestled into, trying to forget Tom and the snapping and sniping at each other.

Thirty minutes passed and Harry was longing for the feel of Tom’s skin, the way Tom would kiss his nose and squeeze his hand and promise that he was there.

He was there for the wrong reason, Harry reminded himself. Tom wasn’t interested in Harry, his actual soulmate, but the embryo Harry was carrying.

One hour, and Harry squirmed, restless. Nothing was comfortable anymore. His bones were cold and his blood was too hot and his hair felt scratchy and his fingers twitched.

Two hours, and Harry’s bones had warmed up.

Three hours, and they were burning rods of molten iron and his blood was magma flowing through him.

Four hours, and his body ached for Tom.

Five hours, and he wondered if maybe he should go, but decided it wasn’t worth it. He’d never live it down if he did go, he had to go without Tom on his own terms.

Six hours and his head pounded and his vision was blurry.

Seven hours, and the ache that still wrapped around his whole body was growing more intense. Harry wrapped his arms around himself, determined to wait whatever this was out.

Eight hours, and there was a dragon. Or was it a basilisk? Harry didn’t know, nor did he care, it had a big mouth and it was going to kill him. He scrambled to his feet, leaning on the wall for support and throwing himself forwards as fast as he could. Something’s hot breath touched his back. There was a man in a black cloak with an oddly misshapen white head, and a red-haired woman and a man who looked a lot like Harry and a boy with a scar, the same boy without that scar, their actions mirrored each other. Harry tore his eyes away from him, but ahead of him was an endless tunnel. He crawled through - there was a light, a light somewhere, and it called him, he had to get there.

His head hit something, and his vision darkened for a moment, but something called him to it. He staggered towards it, desperately reaching -

“Harry?” someone said, before he collapsed onto the floor, body awash with waves of exhaustion, ready to close his eyes and give up and just go.


	12. A Visitor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of dialogue in this one - and some explanations!
> 
> [Trigger warning for the next paragraph: mentions of animal death, mice. If these things upset you, you are advised to skip to the beginning of the chapter]  
> This chapter is dedicated to my beloved little boy Toffee. Toffee was a mouse who died on Monday afternoon, peacefully in his sleep. He will be remembered as a friendly mouse, always curious about the world around him. He was a beautiful and sweet little boy and I will miss him.  
> Love you, baby.

Harry woke up in the hospital wing and almost immediately scowled. Here again! How he longed for his own bed in the house in Austria, in his own room.

“Hadrian James Potter, you have a lot of explaining to do!”

Harry stayed absolutely still.

“I know you’re awake. Up!”

Harry opened his eyes to glare at the familiar Dark wizard. Gellert Grindelwald was looking down at him with a look in his eyes that made him feel twelve years old and caught watching a gathering of acolytes.

“I was asleep!” he complained.

“That you were. But it is not I who woke you. That honor goes to the young man who burst in looking for you and tried to attack me.”

Harry looked past Grindelwald to see Tom with a sheepish smile. “Um. Hi, Harry. Sorry about…” he glanced at Grindelwald.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Harry, and made to stand up and go to the other Slytherin.

Tom crossed the room and sat next to Harry, a hand on his chest to keep him lying down. ‘Don’t you dare,’ said Tom through their mind-link. ‘He doesn’t know about - do you want him to?’

‘No,’ Harry replied. ‘Not yet. How and why is he here! He’s at war with Britain!’

‘And what, exactly, is the Dark Lord doing here with you?’

‘He - it’s a long story. I’ll tell you later.’

“Well?” Grindelwald prompted. “You are aware that Hogwarts sends notices whenever you visit the hospital wing?”

Harry hadn’t known that. But if Grindelwald didn’t know… or was Tom wrong? “What do they say?” he asked, knowing it would appear suspicious, but with Grindelwald it was best to be honest.

“They simply alert me to your presence. In this case, I grew concerned about your repeated stays and decided to come here and check on you in person. Are you injured? Sick?”

“Sick,” Harry blurted out. “But it’s not infectious and it’s okay and I’m going to be okay so you don’t need to come here again. You have a war to run, right! And the enemy is right here! You know Dumbledore teaches here, right? He could be in the other room!”

“I am aware. I arrived under a strong glamour charm and will leave under the same. Now, as for the young man beside you. Who is he and what is he doing here?”

“This is Tom!” said Harry with a nervous smile. “He’s a friend, and he’s, um…”

“I’ve been bringing Harry his homework assignments while he’s been in here,” Tom said with a helpful and convincing smile, his voice smooth like molasses.. “I’m the Head Boy, Tom Riddle. Nice to meet you, Mr. Grindelwald.”

“You’re awfully close to my ward,” Grindelwald said, narrowing his eyes.

Tom shrugged, and neither he nor Harry offered any response.

Grindelwald’s features relaxed into an easygoing smile as his eyes passed between Tom and Harry. It was hard to see him as the fearsome Dark Lord who had been wreaking havoc across Europe and parts of North America for a number of years.

“I see. You’re in good hands, then, Hadrian. I’ld better be off.”

His face warped and his hair darkened and shortened, then he strode off.

Just as Harry thought he was done with being questioned, Tom turned to him. “So. Gellert Grindelwald.”

Harry sat up and buried his face in Tom’s shoulder. “Never go away from me ever again!”

Tom wrapped his arms around Harry’s waist. “All right. Gellert Grindelwald, though?”

“He raised me,” Harry said, his voice muffled by Tom’s robes. “Since I was eleven, anyway. I lived with my mum’s muggle family - my dad’s didn’t want me, after my parents died, and you can tell Charlus doesn’t really like me. I don’t know why they sent me to live with Muggles. Maybe they thought I’d die in a bombing, or be sent off to the country somewhere I couldn’t be found. Probably wishing Charlus had the Lordship and not me. But my dad was older, so… that’s that. Rules of succession and all that. He only gets it if I die, and don’t have a child… bet he’s going to be disappointed.”

Harry laughed.

“My mum was muggleborn, and her parents were dead - influenza polished them right off. So I went to her sister’s family, and they were… awful. They made me live in a fucking cupboard, Tom, a cupboard, and I had to do all their shit for them. They never even lifted a fat fucking finger! They hated me. I’m not sure what happened to my Hogwarts letter, if it was even sent - it wouldn’t be hard for someone heading the Potter estate to prevent it from reaching me, if you know what I mean. But on my eleventh birthday Grindelwald shows up. I didn’t know I was a wizard - too young when my parents were killed in dueling accident, apparently, although I think he might just’ve said that’s how they died ‘cause it was him and he wanted me to trust him. But he took me away from those Muggles and to Austria, where he has this mansion-y house, and that’s where I’ve lived since I was eleven.”

“He trained me, too, in everything he knows - why I’m not clueless even though I’ve never been here before. He refused to send me to Durmstrang. He said they’re homophobic bastards and I believe him. He doesn’t usually lie to me. But then this year, he just decided to send me here. I don’t know why.”

“I’m glad you came,” said Tom, tightening his grip on Harry. “I’ve been reading-”

“-You great bookworm!” Harry teased.

Tom smiled into Harry’s black hair. “I am both great and a bookworm, thank you, darling. I’ve been reading about soulmates - and apparently only the most powerful witches and wizards get them. They’re a link, literally, between souls, which are so tied to magic that our magic recognizes the other person as an extension of itself. Sort of separate, but also sort of not. It’s really interesting!”

Harry sniggered. Tom really was a bookworm.

“That’s how the mind link works. There are three main aspects involved - soul, magic, and mind - and the mind link is because the bond between magic and soul is so strong it needs the mind to be involved to regulate it, almost. There’s a very technical explanation but I need to brush up on my magical theory before I even have a hope of understanding that.”

Harry was impressed. He could barely follow what Tom was saying now - let alone an even more detailed and complicated explanation!

“They’re not necessarily romantic or sexual bonds,” continued Tom, “but that’s often what they are. Like, us. And in some couples, when the bond is especially potent - and it doesn’t have to mean that the two people even like each other very much, although they usually do - it’s possible for our magic to trigger a pregnancy. It works for females, too, but differently, and for us it takes more power because there’s a lot more work involved. That’s why it only happens in men strong enough to sustain the pregnancy.”

Harry was flattered, although not exactly thrilled that apparently this had been decided for him without any input of his own. Not that he didn’t want the child growing inside him, of course! He tried to mentally reassure it.

“As you are discovering, it really is a lot being drawn from you, and Madam Curador explained to me that I have to stay near you otherwise what happened before will happen again. And since it happened once before, it’s more likely to happen in the future. I’m to look after you.”

“I see,” said Harry. “Well, I don’t want to go away from you. Not now, not ever.”

He looked up at Tom to see the other boy had a ridiculously smug expression on his face. Harry reached up and kissed the smirking mouth, relishing the way Tom kissed him right back.

“Mine,” Tom hissed against Harry’s lips.

A thrill shot through Harry at Tom’s clear possessiveness, pooling in his groin. “Yours,” he agreed eagerly.


	13. Harry is Very Cuddly

“We do have classes today,” said Tom after he and Harry had ‘christened’ the hospital wing bed. Harry was thrilled to discover that sex was no longer painful. 

“I do not want to suffer the inevitable when the Dark Lord Grindelwald discovers that not only are you pregnant with my child, you have been skipping classes because of it.” said Tom. “I’ll carry you?”

“I’ll go,” said Harry, “if you let me sit on you.”

Tom sighed. “Fine.” He stood up. “Well?”

“You said you’d carry me,” said Harry with a satisfied smirk, and held his arms out.

Tom scooped him up, bridal style, and carried him to Defense Against the Dark Arts.

“Mr. Potter,” said Professor Merrythought disapprovingly when she saw Harry settling into Tom’s lap. “What have I told you about sitting on Mr. Riddle?”

“Actually Professor,” said Tom, “I’ve got a note from Madam Curador about that.”

He handed over a slip of Muggle paper. Professor Merrythought inspected it, then looked back to Harry and Tom.

“I see,” she said. “Well, Mr. Potter, we will, naturally, take precautions. You may work as a team with Mr. Riddle whenever possible.”

Harry rested his head on Tom’s shoulder, reveling in the soft, warm caress of Tom’s magic.

Professor Merrythought was giving a lecture that day. Tom made his best attempt at writing notes around the lump of Harry on his lap while Harry shifted and mewled and complained.

“Tommm, I’m tired.”

“Tommm, I feel sick.”

“Tommm, my head hurts.”

“Shh, Harry,” Tom said, rubbing circles into Harry’s back. “You’ll get used to it.”

“Meanie,” Harry pouted. “But I wanna stay by you and I’m not sure I like it.”

“Mr. Potter, please be quiet in my class,” said Professor Merrythought.

“It’s only for nine months!” Tom whispered. Harry scowled.

‘Nine months is a long time to feel like shit,’ he said through their mind link.

‘I suppose,’ Tom agreed. 

Potions proved a bit more difficult. Professor Slughorn was more accepting of Harry’s desire (‘need’ was the word Madam Curador had used in her explanation note) to be draped over Tom at all times, but it made potion making difficult for Tom, who had Harry clutching one of his arms and leaning on him and still had to cut, grind, slice, and stir various ingredients.

Harry’s very soul yearned for Tom’s presence. He couldn’t explain why, just that not touching Tom felt like a deep rooted hunger, a starvation he remembered from his early childhood and wished he could forget. They had discovered, when Tom had demanded privacy to use the loo, that Harry being apart from Tom didn’t go very well, especially after the several days of separation and then Harry’s complete exit from Tom’s presence. 

‘I don’t like being attached to you,’ Harry whined.

‘It’s you who suffers when you’re not,’ Tom pointed out. ‘Suit yourself.’

Harry fastened his arms around Tom’s neck and said nothing.

“Tom, Harry, stay behind,” said Professor Slughorn at the end of the lesson. When the other students had filed out of the room, he eyed Harry, who appeared to be trying to meld with Tom into one person.

In a way, Harry thought wryly, that’s what they were doing.

“I’d like to extend an invitation to both of you to a little costume party I’m holding tomorrow night. And might I suggest a couples’ costume, given the current situation?”

“Thank you, Professor Slughorn,” said Tom with a smile. The only word Harry could find to describe it was ‘gorgeous.’ “We’ll be there?”

“What if I don’t want to go?” Harry asked on their way out.

“Well, I’m going and that’s final,” said Tom. “You will come, too, and I’ve had an idea for what we’re going to wear… it’s rather suitable, I think. You know my study group?”

Harry did. Tom had a collection of Slytherins that he met with occasionally, and they did Merlin-knew-what together. Sometimes they came back looking rather ruffled, so he doubted they were really studying. He just hoped they weren’t having orgies - _without him._

And Tom was his. He had the pregnancy to prove it.

“Well, we’re called the Knights of Walpurgis. You really should join, Harry, but of course you will never be just another Knight. I am Lord Voldemort-”

Harry laughed.

“What?” Tom asked, affronted.

“Lord Voldemort?” Harry snickered. “Flight of death? Really?”

“Well - yes. And the ‘t’ is silent, thank you very much. Anyway, you’d be Lord something else, because you’re my consort and I won’t have you anything less.”

“Consort?” Harry yelped. “I never agreed to that! And where’s all this Lord business coming from?”

“You are my soulmate, Harry. Of course you’re my consort. A little bit subservient-”

“Not in your wildest dreams!”

“-but not much. Still above Malfoy and Lestrange and Nott and the Blacks and all the others.”

“The Blacks are part of your group?” Harry asked. None of them had mentioned it to him.

“Well, not yet, but with you at my side I’m sure they’ll join,” said Tom.

“Am not a recruitment card,” Harry scowled. 

Tom pressed a kiss to Harry’s hair. “Of course not, darling. Anyway, my Knights, we’re studying - yes, really! And practicing the Dark Arts. Britain has almost every Dark spell banned just because of its magical affiliation. Awful, right? I’m going to become Britain’s very own Dark Lord.”

“Oh, great.” Harry groaned. “Now I have to deal with two Dark Lords? And you’re both going to want Britain. How wonderful.”

Tom looked affronted. “Now, darling, I’ll accept Britain as your bride price.”

“Bride price!” Harry gasped. “Britain as a bride price! No! No, no, no!”

“Why not?” Tom asked, as if he hadn’t just asked for a country Harry’s guardian hadn’t even conquered yet in exchange for Harry’s hand in marriage, which he did not have. Yet, Harry’s mind pointed out, ever so helpfully.

“Because… because… you’re supposed to propose to me first! And I don’t like being used as a political bargaining card!”

Tom shrugged. “Oh, well then.” He wiggled out of Harry’s grip, and knelt on the ground in the hallway, up on one knee.

“Hadrian James Potter, will you do me the honor of marrying me?”

Harry threw his arms up in the air in exasperation. “What - Tom! I’ll think about it, okay?”

Tom got back to his feet with an incredibly smug expression. “I’ll pick out the perfect ring,” he promised with a shit-eating grin.

Harry rolled his eyes.

“Anyway… since I’m planning on becoming a Dark Lord, I thought I could go to Slughorn’s party as a demon - fitting, isn't it? - and you could go as an angel. So we contrast, but also match.

“All right,” Harry said.

Tom blinked at him. “Really? You agreed awfully quickly.”

“It’s a good idea,” Harry said. “Now get your arm back around me, I want it.”

They arrived at Slughorn’s costume party in style, with a charm that had smoke billowing from behind Tom’s red costume, and another that had a halo floating just above Harry’s head. Tom was wearing a scarlet tunic fastened with a chain, and had two horns sprouting from the top of his head. Harry was in a white tunic held together with glossy white rope and tied in a bow. Where Tom had black leather boots, Harry had sandals.

“This is Lord Potter, my soulmate,” Tom introduced as Slughorn ushered various influential witches and wizards to meet his star pupil. “Magic has blessed us with the child he is carrying.”

The first few times Tom said this, Harry sighed loudly, but when the Undersecretary to the Minister of Magic shook her head and smiled warmly at Harry, saying, “it’s the hormones, I remember from when I was pregnant with my son,” he stopped.

“Stop doing that,” Tom chided. “What I’m saying is true.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to like that you’re spreading it throughout high society,” Harry groused. “I’m going to have to write to _him,_ now, aren’t I, before he hears it from one of his Acolytes.”

There Harry smirked. “And he’ll be out for your blood.”

He cackled at Tom’s rapidly paling face.

__

_Dear Vati,_

_You’ll be hearing this from your people soon, so it’s probably best you hear it from me._

_The boy I was with in Hogwarts is Tom Riddle. He’s the Heir of Slytherin, and we found out that he’s my soulmate. He’s pretty much my boyfriend now. And we consummated our soul bond, on the train - yes, Vati, I know you’re laughing - and we’re both really powerful and Tom says that’s why I’m pregnant now._

_Also, Tom is planning to become a Dark Lord, so maybe you could give him some tips?_

_Your child,_

_Harry_

_p.s. Tom wants Britain as a bride price for me when he marries me and when you’ve conquered it._

Now he could only hope Grindelwald would take the news well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Vati = daddy


	14. Prominence

_  
Harry,_

_Foolish boy! I send you to Scotland to expose you to your peers and this is how you repay my efforts? Perhaps you would have been better off continuing your studies alone, with the children of my Acolytes?_

_Recall that I did not free you from your servitude to Muggles to appoint you my successor. You were saved to atone for an accidental death, to restore equilibrium. Whether you will succeed me or not, this remains to be seen. You were to follow in my footsteps. Now, I cannot say with any certainty whether you will or not._

_You remain my child. It would be easy to bring you, along with your soulmate, back to Austria and keep you sedated until you are ready to give up anything to be in my service. By my mercy only, you have been spared this fate. If you were anyone else, you would already be dead for choosing another over me._

_You were never an Acolyte, child. Although I will never replace the Potters as your blood family, you will always be mine. Not even your inability to use a condom can undermine that._

_Gellert Grindelwald_

Tears slipped down Harry’s cheeks.

“Are you okay?” Orion asked.

Harry shook his head, sinking into Tom’s arms. “He was going to… he was going to…”

“A spot of trouble with his guardian,” Tom told Orion.

“Since when did you speak for my cousin Harry?” Orion demanded.

“Has Harry not told you?” Tom asked, his eyes glinting. “He’s expecting my heir.”

“Wait, really?” Orion’s eyes widened. 

Harry clung onto Tom and pretended he wasn’t there.

“Harry?” Tom petted Harry’s hair. “Are you okay?”

Harry whined, the sound coming from the back of his throat, and pressed closer to Tom.

Tom settled his hand onto Harry’s hip. “Yes,” Tom said. “He is.”

Orion looked between them. “Uhh… congratulations, Harry,” he said awkwardly. “I think.”

“Thank you,” said Harry. “I think.”

“Thank you,” said Tom more firmly, his hand curling more firmly around Harry’s hip.

A few weeks later, the invitations to the Malfoy Yule Ball arrived by owl. The Malfoy Ball was the event of the season. The most popular, exclusive social events happened at Malfoy Manor, which had been originally built for Lucius I, a suitor of Tudor Queen Elizabeth, Henry VIII’s daughter by Anne Boleyn.

Anne’s mother, Lady Elizabeth Boleyn nee Howard’s family, the Howards, were a dying wizarding line, reportedly descended from the Peverells. Of Lady Elizabeth’s children, Mary Howard (a mistress of Henry VIII) was a Squib, Anne was a witch, George was a wizard, and all the others died in childhood before their magical status could be known.

Anne confessed her magical heritage to the King, who was furious, blaming her for doing nothing to save her miscarried pregnancies and stillbirths. She was executed along with her brother George, throwing the Howard line into jeopardy. Lucius was determined to save the renowned family’s heritage - and also likely bind it to his own so his ancestors would be higher in status by marrying the last descendant of the Howards: then-Queen Elizabeth. 

She thoroughly rejected him, declaring she was married to England and only England.

After Elizabeth’s death, the Malfoys became less known in the Muggle world, but retained their many properties and high social status within wizarding society.

Tom received an invitation to the Malfoy Yule Ball, as did the eldest Black of each household represented at Hogwarts. Montgomery Lestrange had one, and Druella Rosier, and quite a few other Slytherins. Abraxas was notable for not having one, because he was Heir Apparent Malfoy and was one of the hosts.

“You can bring a guest,” he told Tom, nodding at Harry, who was cuddled up to Tom yet again.

“When’s the Ball?” asked Harry. He did not want to be fat for such an important event!

“It’s a Yule Ball, Harry,” said Tom, amusement evident in his tone. “It’s over Yule.”

“Um. Right. Yeah. I, uh, I knew that.” Harry hadn’t thought about it, really. And then…

“Oh, damnit!” he exclaimed.

Several Slytherins sighed and turned their noses up at Harry’s rudeness. Harry remembered that British wizards looked down on crass language, seeing it a sign that the speaker lacked class.

To be honest, he didn’t really care. He was Lord Potter, and with an undeniable connection to the House of Slytherin, the strongest claim to the Peverell Lordship seen in centuries, and concrete evidence of his magical strength.

(Merlin, he was starting to sound a little bit like Tom in his head. Or was it one of his former tutors? Really, Tom should become a teacher. It would suit him.)

Nobody could go against him without alienating the Houses of Potter and Slytherin, and nobody would. Even Harry, who had until this September lived exclusively in Austria, had heard the whispers among the higher-up Acolytes that the Slytherin vaults had been activated.

Additionally, anyone whose House had any kind of tie to the Peverells - and many of them did, the family was practically a wizarding legend (there were even rumors that the Brits had had their story published in a children’s book) - could not publically go against Harry while the old oaths and vows were still remembered. Although many people did not know what they were, the Alchemist Nicolas Flamel had been alive when such things were common knowledge, and the chance that he knew was too great to risk everything.

“The theme is ‘birds,’ this year,” said Abraxas with a smile. “You’ll want to get your robes fitted soon so you can be assured your outfit is unique!”

“I can’t believe some people have to buy mass produced clothes,” sniffed a boy by the name of Parkinson.

“I have to,” said a girl softly from a cluster of fourth-years.

“Alicia!” gasped the girl beside her. “You never told me - I knew ‘Chapman’ wasn’t exactly uncommon, but - oh, you poor dear, imagine the shame… why, how awful! Sharing a last name and a wardrobe with so many other people!”

“It’s not that bad,” said Alicia Chapman, the fourth-year.

“Oh, you’re just saying that because you’ve never known anything different,” said Lucretia Black.

Harry turned to Tom. “You’re going to be dressed up as a bird?”

Tom smiled. “Not exactly, no. It’s bird themed, so we’ll find inspiration for our outfits in the appearences of birds, but we’re not going to be dressed up as birds!”

“I see. So, what bird are you going as?” smirked Harry, imagining Tom in a chicken costume with a fake beak. It would look ever so odd on his stately face!

“I don’t know yet,” said Tom, with a fond smile. “And anyway, you’ll be wearing bird-themed clothes too, so don’t put any ideas in my head or you will be dressed up as a bird!”

Harry gasped in mock hurt. “Tom! You wouldn’t!”

Tom laughed. “Try me.”

Harry kissed him on the cheek. “No, you wouldn’t. If I had a beak, that would have been a different kind of ‘peck.’”

Tom made a face. “All right, all right - you’ve convinced me. Now, we should go soon-ish to Twilfitt and Tattings or Madame Malkin’s, depending on which has the best fabric. As soon as I’ve decided on a bird, I think.”

Harry frowned. “You mean, when we’ve decided on a bird. If I’ve got to come, I’m going to have a say in what I wear.”

“Of course, Harry,” said Tom.

“And aren’t you forgetting something?”

Tom’s brows creased. “...what?”

“By Yule, I’m going to be… well. A bit plumper than usual, I expect.”

Tom’s eyes widened in realization. “Ah! Of course. That does make things… difficult.”

Difficult was a hard word. It appeared in some of his earlier memories, before Grindelwald had come, before he had been whisked away into a wondrous world of magic.

He was difficult.

Difficult for the Muggles who had ‘cared’ for him until he turned eleven.

Difficult for Grindelwald, who had taken Harry in and loved him like a son, who had been going to appoint him his successor, grant him a loyal following and all the resources he could want at his fingertips.

Difficult for Tom, the father of his child.

Would he be difficult for the child, too? Would the child dislike him, hate him? Would Tom bother with him anymore?

Harry teared up, hunching in on himself. “I don’t want to be difficult,” he whispered. “I don’t want to be a burden on you, Tom.”

“What? Oh, Harry, you aren’t difficult for me,” Tom murmured back, stroking his hands down Harry’s back. “I’m glad you’ve come into my life. I think, without you, I might have lost all faith in love… but you’re here now and I haven’t. Maybe you’ve even saved my soul, Harry. I am tied to you, but if I weren’t, I would choose you. You are not a burden. Some things are hard, some things are complicated. Maybe that’s the word I should have used: complicated. Some things are a little bit more complicated but I’m glad I know you, Harry, and I’m glad we’re having our child.”

“You won’t leave us?” Harry asked, voice cracking.

“No! Harry, I will never leave you. No matter what. I know I can be violent sometimes, and I’m working on it. Nobody is perfect, not even me… although sometimes I tell myself I am.”

Harry let himself sink into Tom’s chest. “Are you sure?”

“I promise,” Tom whispered, kissing the top of Harry’s head.

Professor Slughorn escorted a group of students, including Tom and Harry, to Diagon Alley at the beginning of December. The morning before they went, Harry stood in his dorm, in front of the mirror, running his hands over his abdomen.

“Are you ready, Harry?” Abraxas appeared from the shower, towelling off his blonde hair.

Harry didn’t reply, too absorbed in his own reflection.

“Um, Harry?” Abraxas appeared concerned.

Harry blinked. “Um.”

“Tom!” called Abraxas. “There’s something wrong with your boyfriend!”

Tom came running. “Harry? Abraxas? Abraxas what is it? Harry are you okay? How are you feeling? Are you hurt?”

Tom held Harry by the shoulders and looked imploringly into his eyes.

“I’m fine,” said Harry at last, in a somewhat detached voice.”It’s just… well.”

He ran his hand over his formerly flat abdomen, letting it rest at the level of his hips.

Formerly.

There was now a bulge that could no longer be excused as bloating or a big meal.

“Harry,” said Tom, embracing him from behind and linking their fingers over Harry’s new bump, “this is our child.”

Harry leaned into Tom’s warm touch. “Yeah.”

Tom squeezed his arms around Harry. “It’s almost time to go,” he said. “Everyone’s getting ready.”

Harry nodded. “Okay. I will. It’s just - well.”

Tom pressed a kiss to the top of Harry’s head. “Hmm?”

Harry swallowed, conflicted. “I don’t want to wake up and this all be a dream. But I’m scared. What if I’m not a good enough father? What if I have this baby and I don’t know what to do with it or how to take care of it? What if I lose it and never have it at all?”

“Harry,” Tom whispered. “You won’t. You’ll be a great father, I just know it.”

“But you don’t know it, is the thing,” said Harry. “How can you know, if you haven’t seen the future?”

“You’re right that I haven’t seen the future. Divination has never really been my thing… and Arithmancy doesn’t tell specific things like ‘Harry is going to have a healthy baby in six months. He is going to be a good father to it.’ But you don’t give up, Harry, you’re determined… and that means that no matter what challenges come up, you’ll find a way through.”

“Thanks,” Harry said. “Right, then! I guess I need to get dressed, don’t I?”

Tom smiled down at the shorter Slytherin. “I guess you do.”

Harry slipped into a minty green robe, one just loose enough to disguise the swelling of his belly. It flowed around his legs, the cloth soft and warm. It had long, fitted sleeves, with slight silver detailing creeping down towards his wrists in curling patterns reminiscent of vines.

“Beautiful,” Tom said.

Abraxas stared at Harry’s typical messy hair and handed over a comb. Harry managed to force his hair into some semblance of neat by combing over the top layer.

Abraxas sniffed, not pleased, but Slughorn was calling for everyone who was planning on going to come down to the common room.

“Harry! Do you have a cloak?” Tom asked.

Harry looked down at himself. “Um, no. I don’t.”

Tom sighed. “You need one! It’s cold outside, Harry.”

Harry sighed and slipped a silver cloak on top of his robe. It wasn’t his warmest cloak, but it was only the beginning of December. He didn’t really need a thick one, surely? Britain was famously one-seasoned.

Tom was quite fetching, Harry thought, in a robe such a dark shade of green it looked black in some lights, one that hung quite close to his body but flowed around his legs when he walked like he was floating on shadows. His own cloak was black, with, Harry noticed amusedly, the Slytherin crest stitched onto the fastening.

Tom took Harry’s hand and led him down to the common room, where Professor Slughorn was gathering a small crowd to go to Diagon Alley. They’d had a chance to sign up, and been told that anyone who wasn’t signed up couldn’t go, but even so people who hadn’t signed up were pestering Professor Slughorn to go with him.

Professor Slughorn waved to Tom and Harry and took a roll call, ensuring that everybody who was supposed to had come, and ushered them out of the common room and outside the Hogwarts gates. He counted them out, making sure nobody left who ought not.

They took a Portkey to Diagon Alley, which was packed with families hurrying to buy Christmas and Yule gifts.

“It’s a fairly even split, between Christianity and the old pagan ways,” Tom explained. “Quite a few of Britain’s oldest pureblood families now are those that came over with the Normans - the Malfoys, the Lestranges, Rosiers, the Averys, the Blacks.”

“The Blacks?” Harry was surprised to hear that.

“That’s right,” Orion chimed in. “Our family came over here with William the Conqueror. Our surname was actually originally ‘le Noir’, and there’s an old story my mother told me when I was little about it actually being ‘le Tête de Noir’ but nobody wants to be called Mr. Head, and it got collapsed into ‘le Noir,’ and then we came over here, and to fit in with the locals and seem more like them and convince them to follow our ideas… we changed it to the English ‘the Black’ - there was a rather famous Auriga the Black, who rode around on a chariot at Yule, and then a few generations later we were just Blacks.”

“Wow,” said Harry. “In Austria, people mostly worship the gods Woden and Donar, Mάni and Sunna, and some others. My, um, guardian is a very spiritual person and he worships some obscure deities - Saga and Þrúðr.”

“Who?” Orion asked.

Harry shrugged. “Goddesses. Saga’s the goddess of basically Divination, but real-”

“Arithmancy?” asked Tom.

Harry shook his head. “No. She’s more like the goddess of Seers. And Þrúðr, she’s the goddess of power.”

“Goddess of power?” Tom hummed. “I wonder if worshiping her does any good.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Depends on whether you believe in her, I guess. I don’t know. I, um, I show up for rituals and dedicate stuff to Mάni and Sunna, but I celebrate Christmas. I’ve never really thought about it.”

“Blasphemy,” snorted Tom. Harry snickered.

“I guess it is. I don’t worship the Christian God, I just…”

“...take advantage of the good bits of the holidays?” asked Orion.

Harry blushed. “I guess that’s it, really.”

“My family actually worships some of the Egyptian deities,” said Orion, “although Callidora is Christian, and she doesn’t know that I know but it’s in Cassiopeia's blackmail book. Not that I’d use it to blackmail her! There’s nothing wrong with anyone else’s religion, it’s just not mine, right?”

“Egyptian?” Harry asked curiously. “I don’t know anything about that. Can you tell me?”

Orion lit up like an electric torch. “Yeah! I believe that heka is the embodiment of magic, and connects the physical and spiritual worlds. Heka is how gods in the spiritual world influence the physical world, and as wixen, we are granted a small portion of that power to use. I guess it’s also partly to do with European paganism, too, because we celebrate the solstices and do rituals to give back to the gods who gift us with magic.”

“Wow,” said Harry. “That’s really cool. Did your parents teach you that?”

Orion nodded. Harry turned to Tom. “What are we going to… you know?”

Tom smiled. “Eloquent as ever. I think we’ll see what happens, don’t you?”

“Okay,” said Harry. “That sounds good. If - you know - I don’t…”

“You won’t,” Tom promised. “Look, we’re here. Time to see about those robes I ordered…”

“You ordered our robes without me?” Harry squeaked.

“You can make any adjustments you’d like,” added Tom quickly. “Please, Harry, don’t argue?”

Harry bit his lip. “All right,” he agreed eventually, “but only because I’m in a forgiving mood.”

Tom smiled, and they went into Madame Malkin’s shop.

Madame Malkin was an up and coming designer, a young woman with an eye for high fashion. Her work was based of traditional wizarding garb, but had individual elements to suit each wearer. She made a pretty penny off the Malfoy’s various social gatherings!

Tom stepped up to the counter. “I believe you have an order for Riddle?”

Madame Malkin smiled. “Yes, yes, I do. If you’ll just step this way!”

They went into a dressing room off the side of the main display room. The walls were almost entirely mirrors. Everywhere Harry looked there were reflectected Harrys, Toms, and Madame Malkins.

Madame Malkin whisked two robes out of a closet Harry hadn’t noticed. “Here you go! Robes inspired by the Victoria crowned pigeon.”

Harry gaped at Tom. “Pigeon! I am not looking like a pigeon!”

Tom smirked. “Wait ‘till you see these. Victoria crowned pigeons aren’t your London scavengers.”

Harry wrinkled his nose. The gray city pigeons he was familiar with weren’t anything he wanted to look like.

The robes, when Madame Malkin revealed them, looked nothing like gray city pigeons.

They were cornflower blue in the dark, but when light hit them they brightened to maya. Tom’s had maroon teardrop shapes running down the sleeves, and both of them had peacock-feather esque ruffs over the neckline, spilling down the upper part of the chest. The peacock-feather shapes were a glistening blue with white crescents in the bulbous tips. Harry’s had the same maroon teardrops Tom had around his cuffs and on the neckline.

The robes were accompanied by two capes, of similar blue-and-white peacock-feather shapes overlapping just enough that they weren’t transparent, but held the illusion of a gauzy layer of feathers.

The ‘crowning’ piece were headdresses of the same distinctive feathers. Tom’s had a slim headband that would support the feathers in a mimicry of a crown. Harry’s own headdress had the feathers arranged to fall downwards around his head, crossing over his forehead and wrapping around his head at the same height.

“If you’ll just try them on, they’ll resize to fit you properly, and should stay that way,” Madame Malkin said. Tom nodded and accepted the two sets of clothing, handing Harry his own.

“I’ll be back when you’re ready for me,” said Madame Malkin. “Just give me a call.” She left them alone.

Tom’s outfit fit him like a glove. He looked positively regal in it, and preened like a real bird would.

Harry’s also fit like a glove, and that was his problem. When Madame Malkin came in, she took one look at Harry and advised him to avoid any more sweet treats, which had visibly crumpling and covering his face, which was burning in embarassment.

Tom wrapped his arms around Harry and glared at Madame Malkin.

“I’m a stylist - I give advice, it’s what I do!” Madame Malkin protested, but when Tom’s glare intensified she quickly backtracked. “Not that there’s anything wrong, dear, you look wonderful - I suppose that came out quite wrong -”

Tom shoved a bag of coins at her and told her, rather scathingly, to get out of the dressing room. He stripped and returned to his normal clothes, then wrapped around Harry like an octopus.

“She thinks I’m fat,” Harry choked.

“You’re not fat,” Tom told him. “You look lovely. That’s our child, remember?”

Harry wiped away his tears and sniffed. “How can I forget?”

“I think your pregnancy is beautiful,” Tom told him. “C’mon, let’s get you into normal clothes and we can look around before it’s time to go, all right? Have you been to Diagon Alley before?”

Harry shook his head.

“Well then!” said Tom. “I’ll show you around, hmm?”

Harry pressed his face into Tom’s shoulder. “Hug,” he demanded.

“Or I can just hug you if that’s what you want.”

Harry stayed in Tom’s arms for ten minutes before Tom started removing the pigeon-inspired robes and redressed him in his own pale blue and silver robe. He wrapped his arm around Harry’s shoulders and led him through Madame Malkin’s store in silence, his head held high and Harry pressed to his side.


	15. Harry Makes A Plan

“I’m going to ruin her career,” Harry said when they had left Madame Malkin’s shop.

“All right,” said Tom.

“I can’t use the paper, because there are slander laws… or hold on, I can, because it’s not slander if it’s true, is it? But if I do that… if I go to the papers, I become a public spectacle.”

Tom sighed. “It’s going to happen sooner or later, isn’t it?”

“I don’t want to be talked about,” Harry said. He would be, he knew that, but… if he could control the press, maybe?

He needed some kind of blackmail material on… who owned most of the shares of the Daily Prophet?

He asked Orion. Orion grinned. “My dad, Arcturus Black.”

A smirk spread across Harry’s face. “I will destroy her!” he hissed. “Orion… I believe I need to speak with cousin Cassiopeia.”

Orion burst out laughing once he realized what Harry had planned. “It’s a bit much, for one woman, isn’t it? What did she do to you?”

Harry kicked at the ground. “She said a horrible thing. And I don’t care how petty it may seem, I will have my revenge!”

“I like this side of you,” commented Tom, a delighted look on his face. “You’re… vindictive!”

Harry grinned. “She’s going to regret being rude to me. She’ll only ever be visited for making school robes! Twilfitt and Tattings is her main competitor, right?”

Orion nodded.

“Excellent. Tom… you know those robes?”

“Yes.”

“We’re going to have them remade.”

“What? Harry that’s a lot of money-”

“I’ll pay for it,” said Harry flippantly, “I just don’t want to be wearing her stuff. I like the idea. Some changes - I want the bird thing a little bit more subtle. I don’t want to be mistaken for an actual pigeon - and a new label and it’ll be perfect.”

“If you really want it,” said Tom, now wary.

Harry nodded. “Yup! And we’re going to go public with our baby, too, and I - I don’t really want to, to be honest, but…”

“You don’t have to get your revenge in this way,” Tom said carefully. “There are other, less scandalous…”

“More illegal,” said Harry. “People are going to find out. People are going to talk. They probably already are. I might as well be in control. Actually - maybe I don’t even need Cassiopeia. Although I’d rather have her as backup just in case. I can just buy the Prophet.”

Tom yelped. “Careful, or you’ll be penniless within a year!”

Harry giggled, much happier now that he had a plan. “I have ridiculous amounts of money, Tom! It’s okay!”

“All the same,” said Orion, “you might want to be a little bit more… careful, with your spending of it. Just in case something comes up.”

Harry sighed. “Fine. I’ll just use the blackmail. She has something, right?”

“Oh, I’m sure she does, but you’ll have to negotiate with her for it. She drives a hard bargain.” Orion said.

Harry chewed on his lip. “What does Cassiopeia like?”

Tom shrugged. “I don’t know. Girl stuff?”

“She reads books,” said Orion. “She always gets books for Yule. She likes to collect rare ones.”

“I see… I’ll write Grindelwald and see what he can get for me. I’m sure someone has an old family treasure they’ll be okay with handing over instead of being Crucio’d. Repeatedly, in my honor.”

“I wouldn’t mind doing the Crucioing,” Tom said with a gleam in his eyes.

“What? No. The point is to get a book, not to Crucio people - where did you learn that anyway, it’s illegal!” Harry frowned at Tom.

“Oh come on, you have so little faith in me. I taught myself,” said Tom proudly. “It’s become one of my favorite curses.”

“Yeah, I bet. Dark magic is… pleasurable to cast at first.” Harry sighed. “If you get caught and sent to prison I will visit you, and you won’t be the one doing the Crucioing then!”

“You mean you’d come to be imprisoned with me? How sweet!”

Harry sighed again. “No, you great nitwit, I’d be Crucioing you for being such an idiot.”

“I’m not an idiot!” Tom protested.

Harry clicked his tongue. “I never said you were. But you would be if you went and got arrested for torturing people with the Dark Arts.”

Tom shrugged. “I won’t get caught, don’t worry.”

“You don’t mean you’re still doing it!” Harry hissed.

“What do you think I do in Knights of Walpurgis meetings?” Tom hissed back.

“You mean you formed the whole thing to be a - a disguise for you torturing people? That’s literally all you do? Tom that’s awful! I’m surprised anybody joined you!”

Tom sniffed. “That’s not all we do,” he said, and Harry could feel his shoulder muscles tightening. He leaned up and kissed Tom’s cheek.

“Sure. Now, Twilfitt and Tattings… where is that…”

Orion pointed. “I’ll see you later, Harry, Tom. I’ve got stuff to do.”

Harry hustled Tom to the clothing shop and strode up to the counter. “I need robes tailored and I need to speak with someone about it now,” he said.

“Now?” said the person at the metal counter, an androgynous person with sandy-colored short hair neatly slicked back.

“Now.” said Harry firmly.

The person at the counter, Harry noticed, had a name tag pinned onto their chest. Mx. Hindley. They turned around and called for someone to come and assist Harry and Tom.

“My twin sibling,” Mx. Hindley introduced when the other person arrived. “They’ll help you today.”

“Hi!” The other person, whose name tag also said ‘Mx. Hindley’ was beaming from ear to ear. Other than the smile and a birthmark on one of their cheeks, the two were identical. “Call me Cameron!”

“Hi, Cameron,” said Harry. “I need you to change a few of the colors on these… the purple needs to be deeper and purpler and I want some of these feathery things off. The ones on the necks don’t need to be there. Yeah, those ones.”

Cameron had a measuring tape and their wand out, and was rapidly measuring and adjusting coloring, expanding bits of fabric and reconfiguring the seams.

“Here,” they said when Harry was happy with the colors, “try these on.”

The two Slytherins did, and they fit perfectly. Tom frowned a bit at the shade of purple Harry had chosen, but at a sharp look from Harry accepted it.

“Thanks, Cameron!” Harry beamed. “They’re beautiful!”

Cameron grinned back at him.

“We’ve been in Diagon Alley for a while,” said Tom worriedly, “I think we should go and see what the others are doing, at least. We don’t want to be called out for holding everyone back.”

“You don’t, you mean,” Harry contradicted.

Tom scowled. “Just because you’ve had the world bowing at your feet-”

“Not the whole world, Tom! Just bits of Europe! Oh, and some of Japan.”

Tom’s arms moved in a wild gesture of frustration. “That’s what I mean! Not everyone’s been… royalty the way you were, Harry! And just because it happened once doesn’t mean it’s the same here, you don’t rule the world!”

“Yet,” said Harry. “Right?”

Tom pulled Harry into the street. “You will rule by my side, yes. But please don’t go announcing it to everyone? If the wrong person gets wind of my plans, I’m ruined. You’re ruined. You can’t run away from me now, can you?”

Harry sighed. “Tom…”

Tom scowled. “You have to say it like that.”

“Tom,” said Harry again, voice gentler this time, “I don’t want to run away from you.”

“Prove it,” said Tom, looking away.

Harry captured Tom’s mouth in a searing, fiery kiss, a raw demonstration of his claim on the taller boy.

“Proof enough for you?” Harry asked when he drew back, breathless from lack of air.

“I am tempted,” said Tom, swallowing hard, “to ask for more. But perhaps not here.”

Harry looked around the alley. It wasn’t crowded, but there were people around every corner, moving around in little groups. “Not here,” he agreed.


	16. The Plotting

A few days later, a package arrived for Harry in the mail, with a short note attached. The note read, ‘don’t do anything foolish. One of three copies worldwide, 1143.’ The package, when he unwrapped it, was a book entitled _Anshent Beestes in Moderne Foke-Loorr_ and bound in thick leather.

Harry caught Cassiopeia’s eye and wrapped the book back up in the brown paper it had come in. Her cheek twitched in understanding, pulling her mouth tight, looking for all the world like the actions of someone chewing her breakfast.

Unless, that is, you had been watching her long enough to know she didn’t have any food in her mouth.

A spoon prodded Harry’s mouth, and he obediently opened it, allowing Tom to feed him porridge. “I can eat on my own,” he pointed out when he had swallowed.

“You can,” agreed Tom, “but you don’t. If you want a job done, do it yourself.” He heaved a longsuffering sigh.

“I eat fine!”

Tom stared at him. “If you had your way, you’d eat half the amount you should be. And even then you forget what food is for sometimes!”

Harry looked down. That was true, he knew that. He had spent so many years being around food and not being allowed to eat it, eating and food being on a table just weren’t associated in his head any more.

‘Freaks don’t get food,’ the man had said. ‘Freaks stay in the cupboard.’

Harry was an obedient little boy when he could. He’d been quiet and careful and he’d tried so hard, but sometimes things just happened! Sometimes strange things happened around Harry, things he knew now were accidental magic, but back then… he’d really believed he was a freak.

Sometimes he still did. What kind of man got pregnant, anyway?

“Harry?” Another spoonful of porridge appeared.

A good beating had been the cure for everything Harry did and was. It hadn’t worked. It never worked. But they kept trying. Again and again, and Harry hurt, and he still had scars, silvery lines not even the potions Grindelwald had poured on him when he found them could heal. Some were too deep, some had been there too long. Magic couldn’t do everything.

It could do this. Harry was constantly aware of the weight he was gaining on his front, the bulge that had appeared on his midsection. His loose school uniform hid it well, but it seemed even more apparent than it had been a few days ago at Madam Malkin’s.

Tom’s arm slipped around him. “Harry, eat, please.”

Harry opened his mouth. In went the porridge, out came the spoon.

“Are you okay?” Tom asked.

Harry wasn’t, but he wasn’t just going to say so in front of everybody. He focused on their bond, on the hole in his mind that was really a tube connecting him to Tom, or at least that was what it felt like. He forced his thoughts and memories through it with a puff of air.

Tom’s grip tightened around Harry’s waist. ‘I’ll kill them!’ he fumed through their bond.

‘Don’t get caught killing anybody,’ Harry replied. ‘I’ve grown rather fond of you and I don’t want you arrested and imprisoned for life.’

‘I won’t get caught,’ Tom promised.

Cassiopeia pulled Harry off to the side after breakfast was finished. “What is it?” she asked when they had entered an alcove hidden by a painting of a landscape.

“I have a deal for you,” Harry told her. He held up the wrapped book. “I need to manipulate Arcturus Black, Orion’s father, into selling me his shares for the Daily Prophet.

“I see,” she said. “What do I get out of this arrangement?”

Harry pulled the brown paper off yet again before returning his right hand to the pocket he had his wand in and curling his fingers around it. “This.”

She stared at it. “I’ll take it,” she said, “but for what you’re asking, I think I need a little more.”

Harry wipped out his wand and shoved it beneath her chin. “It is one of three copies in the world, and is hundreds of years old. I am giving you a bargain. Take it.”

She gulped. “All right,” she agreed. “Let me go.”

He did. “Get me my information and I’ll give you the book if it works.”

“I want the book as soon as I’ve done my bit.”

He shook his head. “After I use the information, or not at all.” His wand was out again.

She glanced from the book to his wand to his face. “Fine.”

Harry grinned and deposited his wand back into his pocket. “Shake on it?’

She took his hand and shook it thrice. She had a surprisingly firm grip for someone with such polished looking hands, and when she released his own hand it had yellow marks from her fingers, as well as a series of half moon cuts from her nails.

“I could give you a good time, too, if you wanted it,” she told him.

Harry shook his head. “You’re a pretty girl, Cassiopeia, but my tastes run other ways.”

The returning smile was sharp as a werewolf’s claws. Only, it wasn’t on her face. RIght before him, she had transformed into a tall, fair-haired young man, looking just a few years older than Harry, with ocean blue eyes. Her robes were now much too short for her, and they rode up, revealing shapely calves, and hugged her chest, revealing a chiseled, toned figure.

Harry’s mouth went dry. “No,” he said. He was carrying Tom’s child, he was Tom’s soulmate - he might have fucked this beautiful man if he’d met him (or her?) in the past, but he was comitted now. And he wasn’t going to cheat.

She shifted again, this time turning into a carbon copy of Tom. The smile on her face was purely Cassiopeia, but everything else…

“Harry,” said Tom’s voice from Tom’s mouth. Only the person standing in front of Harry wasn’t Tom, not really, wasn’t linked to his mind and soul the way Tom was, wasn’t the father of his child.

“Come with me, Harry,” said Cassiopeia from behind Tom’s beautiful face.

“You aren’t him,” said Harry. “I won’t!”

Cassiopeia leaned in, bringing a hand forward. “Aren’t I?” she asked, and for a moment she looked just like…

Tom! Tom’s hands, his real hands, were pulling Cassiopeia away. “You are done here,” sneered the real Tom, wrapping his arms around Harry, one hand over the small bump. “What were you doing with her?”

Cassiopeia turned back into herself and fled.

“I was making a deal with her!” Harry explained. “I wasn’t - you know I wasn’t - don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t like to think you were,” said Tom, shifting so that he was facing Harry. He lunged, capturing Harry’s mouth in a searing kiss. It wasn’t sweet or gentle or romantic. This was a kiss of pure lust and possessiveness.

Tom pulled Harry’s tie off and started undoing the buttons of his robes.

“Tom?” Harry squeaked.

“Mine,” Tom breathed, yanking the uniform off Harry, leaving him standing in nothing but his trousers and boxers, which Tom made short work of.

He slammed Harry with a lubrication spell, leaving him feeling cold and wet and slick, before sliding himself in. It was nothing like being manually prepared, nothing, even, like the gentler spells. But then, Harry didn’t think gentle was what Tom was going for.

Tom pounded into him, each thrust leaving Harry with a dull, sickly burning sensensation in his arse that barely had time to fade before Tom was back, and the pain was too, with full fervor.

“Tom!” Harry said, breathless, barely managing to get the words out. “Someone might see!”

“Then let them see,” said Tom, and then his lips and teeth were on Harry’s neck, rough and pulling, and this wasn’t like anything Harry had experienced with anyone else, it was almost flippant, but driven by passion in a strange contradiction. Time seemed to go quickly and oh-so slowly, the same moments taking hours and nanoseconds. Harry wasn’t sure if he was Lord Hadrian Potter or someone else, someone quite different but at the same time, not.

Anyone could see them, and everyone would know. Everyone would know anyway, how could anything else happen? It was impossible. Tom was impossible. Harry was impossible.

Nothing meant they couldn’t cancel out.

Maybe anything could be possible, after all, just like Harry had hoped when he was eleven and a man promised him he would never have to see the Muggle family again.

That was a mood-killer. Harry ripped his thoughts away from his childhood and focused on Tom’s hands running down his naked body, Tom’s hands holding him just the way Tom wanted, bent over, his knees aching from the strain, he was taking it because - well - because Tom wanted him to, and Harry was enjoying it far too much to stop even if it hurt, Tom’s soft lips on his skin, Tom’s cock in his arse, pulling in and out, heating up the lube, smearing it over his cheeks with the same squelching sound as a foot pulling out of sticky mud, Tom’s hot breath ruffling Harry’s hair, cooling the sweat gathering at the roots.

Harry’s chest vibrated with a low moan. There was a bead of sweat trickling down his back, he could feel it creeping, almost tickling, it was evidence of the control he had surrendered - or had taken from him, and really, he didn’t mind - to Tom, his body was Tom’s in this moment, Tom could play him like an instrument and wield him like a weapon against Harry himself.

Tom’s cum was warm and sticky when it filled Harry up, trickling out of him in a steady flow. His arse ached, and when he looked down at himself he was covered in rough bruises from Tom’s hands and mouth.

“Merlin, Harry,” whispered Tom after a moment. “I didn’t realize I was so… rough. Did I hurt you?”

Harry sighed. The sweat that coated his naked body was drying, leaving him cold, the tiny hairs on his arms and legs prickling. “A bit,” he said. “I didn’t mind it, but next time, could you maybe ask? Explicit consent is important, you know.”

“I’ll try,” said Tom.

It wasn’t perfect, but nobody was perfect. It was, Harry thought, the best thing he was going to get out of Tom.

His robes were crumpled on the floor. He slid them back on as Tom buttoned his own trousers and robes (he hadn’t even taken off his shirt!) noting with a sigh of resignation that they were missing a button. He got his wand out to apply a glamour charm to his neck, where the bruises Tom’s lips had left weren’t exactly subtle, but Tom grasped his wrist and shook his head. “Don’t,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t want you to,” said Tom after a moment’s hesitation. “I want people to know.”

When he was thinking clearly, Tom was a lot more nervous about their relationship being known, Harry noted. But he’d been draped over Tom in public for weeks, it wasn’t a secret anymore, although the sexual element hadn’t been demonstrated to anyone…

So he shrugged, and didn’t cast the glamour charm.

Cassiopeia handed Harry a scrap of parchment later that day, raising an eyebrow at his limp and bruises, but said nothing.

He unfolded the parchment. 

_Arcturus Black II, son of Sirius Black and Hesper Black nee Gamp. Father of Lucretia and Orion. Husband of Melania Black nee McMillan. Had affair with Oenone Yaxley, niece of Lysandra Yaxley, who is married to Arcturus Black I. Last observed meeting August 1944. Illegitimate son Pertinax, illegitimate daughter Pulcheria. Oenone is married to Gordian Rowle, publicly he is the father of Pertinax and Pulcheria, however I came across Gordian, Oenone, and Arcturus discussing the fatherhood of Oenone’s four children. Pertinax and Pulcheria are Arcturus’, Quintillus and Claudius are not, they cast a spell I could not break to prevent eavesdropping, I assume, and I did not hear who the father of Q and C is. Gordian is impotent, that’s how they know none of the kids are his, and anyhow they had genetic tests (stole from trunk, this happened at Ostara celebration, everyone was staying together) P and P are A’s son and daughter, he has been working to cover this up. He could be charged with Line Theft, victim himself_

A grin spread across Harry’s face. He’d confront Arcturus at the Yule Ball, he would be there - anyone who was anyone would be there, and nobody who wasn’t anyone was worth blackmailing - and the Daily Prophet would be his.

“That’s what you asked for?” Tom nodded to the parchment.

“Yeah. It’s great, this’ll get the job done and wow.” He showed the text to Tom, whose eyes widened minutely. His face was otherwise frozen in a mask of perfect calm.

“I see,” he said levelly. Too calmly. “Cassiopeia Black knows all this, then?” He hummed.

“You’re not going to steal her blackmail book!” Harry gasped.

Tom shook his head. “I’m just going to take a leaf out of it.”


	17. The Yule Ball

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Tom leave Hogwarts and attend the Malfoy Yule Ball.

“Say, Harry,” said Orion, coming up to Harry, who was reclining on Tom’s lap in the common room, his legs supported by the sofa and his head on Tom’s shoulder. “Do you want to stay with me over break?”

Tom frowned.

“I don’t think I can,” said Harry apologetically. “Not unless Tom can come, too.”

Orion shook his head. “I don’t… my parents wouldn’t… sorry…”

“I’m aware,” said Tom tightly.

“Harry, you can come though!” Orion’s face was hopeful. “You can owl him, and… it would be really nice to have someone to talk to over break. My parents always get - ugh. They don’t like each other one bit. And Lucretia just hides in her room, they don’t exactly approve of her relationship with Septimus Weasley, he’s a decent bloke but some of his family members disagree very loudly with our ideals, and Meissa is only seven, and she’s tiny even for seven.”

Harry bit his lip. “I’m sorry, Orion, I really can’t. I would, but I get sick if I’m away from Tom for too long, and I don’t want to go through that again.”

“Oh.” Orion hung his head. “I suppose, then, I’ll see you at the Yule Ball.”

“See you at the Yule Ball,” Harry agreed.

Yule Break started on December 20th, the day before the Malfoys’ Yule Ball. All the Slytherins except Tom and Harry were leaving to stay with family, and Tom, it turned out, had arranged for them to go to Malfoy Manor with Abraxas and stay overnight.

“You could have asked me!” Harry complained.

“I am asking you,” said Tom, on the morning of the 20th. “Are you coming or not?”

“You know I don’t have a choice, if you’re leaving so am I - but I would have liked to be asked before you said we were going! Tom, I am not under your control.”

Tom looked away and refused to answer.

“Tom! Please. Next time there’s a decision to be made, you could at least mention it!”

Harry moved so he was facing Tom, who scowled. “I hear you.”

“Well?” Harry demanded.

“Sure. Fine. I will. I just forgot this time. I’m not used to you being-” he waved his hand -   
“A person of equal importance as myself.” Tom closed his trunk, flipping it so the embossed Slytherin emblem was visible. “Are you almost ready to go?”

Harry looked at his own trunk, which, although open, was empty, with clothes strewn about. They were only going for one night and one day, they didn’t really need much more than two sets of regular clothes, their outfits for the Ball, and maybe a book to read. Harry had packed nothing.

“Just choose a few things and throw them in. Everything you have there is suitable to wear at Malfoy Manor - maybe not the crimson, they’re awfully proud of their Slytherin-ness.” Tom advised.

“I - I’m really starting to doubt this,” whispered Harry.

Tom made his way to Harry’s side. “What?”

“I don’t want to… be shunned, I guess. I just came to this country a few months ago. Grindelwald says it’s where I was born, and I guess I would have been. I’m sure you saw it in the papers - I’m Frederick Potter’s son, his with Calliope Rosier, he married her privately and they didn’t make it public, even his younger brother Phineas didn’t know. They weren’t close, anyway… and then Frederick died, it was all very mysterious, and Calliope died just after giving birth to me. I was adopted, I suppose you could say, the orphanage I ended up in paid a few Muggles to take me off their hands, and they did, but they - they were awful, they hurt me, Tom, I don’t want to go back…”

“You won’t go back,” Tom murmured, wrapping Harry in his arms. “You have the Dark Lord now, don’t you?”

“That’s the thing! I’m afraid he - he was going to let me inherit everything, and now I won’t, and I’m afraid he’ll be angry and he’ll send me back, I was with those horrible Muggles until I was eleven, and there must have been some sort of magic, I didn’t get a Hogwarts letter, but he knew where I was, and I’m not sure how or why, but he rescued me - he came in with weird white hair, I remember thinking it was rather odd, and he found me bleeding in my cupboard, that’s where they kept me - and I thought I was going to die - and he took me away, and then I was in Austria and he cleaned me and put me to sleep and it took a long time, but when I was about twelve, maybe twelve and a half, he told me who he was, and started teaching me things. And then he decided I should come here for a year, experience the culture, my culture, he said, but he’s the Dark Lord, he’s a good liar, I’ve seen him lie to other people… and I’m afraid -” Harry hiccupped. 

“I’m afraid he’s decided he doesn’t want me. That he doesn’t need a charity case, or that I’m old enough to take care of myself - and I’m afraid that, I’m afraid that I’m not, I’m seventeen, and I’m still just - a child, how can I have a baby, Tom? He hates me, he was afraid to tell me by letter, maybe he hates me, he hates me, I know he hates me and I have nowhere to go, I’m trying to do political-ish things, Tom, but I don’t know how it all works here, I’ve never been really interested in all that rot, I just want to live in peace, I can’t have a baby - I don’t know what to do with one! I’ve got no-one and nothing, all the Potter stuff is mine but Charlus, that arse, and his father and mother are still living in one of my houses, I don’t know if it’s really mine but it might be and I don’t know how to find out, I don’t want to fight anyone, but he’s awful - ever since the public found out about my heritage he’s been sending threats in the mail… at least until I came to Britain just in time for September.

“I got poisoned cakes from him, little cakes, and if I hadn’t tested them - why he thought I wouldn’t, stupid idiot - I might have died, and I’m sure that’s what he wanted! If I die, his father is next in line, and then him. Well, at least until… this.” He gestured to his bump.

“Now he’s getting moved down, and they’re going to find out, and what if it gets worse? Tom, it’s so obvious, I’m scared, and I’m all fat and ugly, I don’t know if I can handle it - I don’t want the press on my tail, I want to be left alone! I don’t - I can’t - why!” Harry was crying now.

“Hey, hey,” Tom said, guiding him to his bed, sitting down, and pulling him onto his lap. “You’re not fat, my darling, you’re pregnant, and I’m so proud of you. You’re brave. And you’re beautiful, Harry, you aren’t ugly at all! Don’t say that. I’m with you every step of the way, okay? I’ve got you.”

“I don’t think I can do this,” Harry sobbed.

Tom tightened his arms around Harry. “You can. I know you can. Just stay with me and I promise you I will make it okay. I’ll help you with Charlus and Phineas, hmm? You’re my soulmate, Harry, this only happens once, maybe twice a century - it’s a powerful and mysterious magic nobody really knows much about, it’s hard to study since it’s so rare. But it means something. It means we are meant for each other, somehow and in some way, we fit together, we are connected. Our souls and magic are compatible, and together we are stronger than each of us on his own. We’re a team, Harry.”

“If we’re a team,” asked Harry through his tears, “why does it feel like I’m doing all the work?”

“I don’t know,” said Tom, “but maybe you’re - maybe you’re better at it than I would be, I don’t know.”

“I think you would have blown up the world by now,” said Harry.

Tom sighed. “Maybe I would have.”

Harry clung onto Tom, hiding his face in his chest. “Let me stay like this forever?”

Tom hummed into Harry’s hair. “I’ve got you, my darling.”

After a few minutes, he pried Harry’s head away and looked him in the eye, silvery gray meeting emerald green. “How about I pack your trunk for you, hmm? We’ve got to get to the station soon.”

Harry nodded. “Okay, I suppose.”

Tom left him sitting on the bed and folded three sets of clothes, setting them gently into Harry’s trunk. He’d chosen mostly black, with hints of green and purple.

“That shirt is awfully form fitting,” Harry murmured, eyeing the indigo shirt Tom had just packed.

“I think it will look good on you,” Tom said.

“Won’t it - make - you know - obvious?”

Tom chewed on his lip. “Harry… it’s going to come out tomorrow. You know that, right? You mentioned it yourself…”

“I know - I’m just - I’m scared, okay?”

Tom took his hand and squeezed it. “You’ll get through it. You’re going to be okay.”

“Thanks,” Harry whispered.

Tom closed Harry’s trunk and stood up. “Right! I’ll carry these and I think we’re ready to go.”

“I can carry my own trunk,” Harry pointed out, even as Tom picked it up along with his own and started going down the stairs.

“You’re pregnant, darling, I won’t have you overexerting yourself!” Tom replied.

“I can carry a trunk with three sets of clothes in it, honestly,” muttered Harry. Tom smirked and kept walking.

Abraxas was waiting in the common room with his own trunk. Like Tom’s, it was covered with leather and embossed with his family crest. “Hey, Tom, hey, Harry.” 

The three of them made their way to Hogsmeade Station, where the Hogwarts Express was waiting. They rode in a compartment with Cygnus, who engaged in a lively discussion of the upcoming Quidditch season with Abraxas, Alphard, who was absorbed in an ancient-looking, thick book, Walburga, who smiled at Harry and moved to sit next to him, and Druella, who kept gazing at Walburga with clear longing in her eyes.

“How have you been feeling, Harry?” asked Walburga, ignoring the way Tom wrapped his arm pointedly around the shorter boy.

“Better, thanks,” he said. “A lot better recently.”

She smiled. “I am glad to hear that! And how are you, Tom? Looking forward to being a father?”

“Yes, thank you, Walburga,” he said.

“Say, Walburga,” said Druella, “what do you think of the ancient lyric poetry?”

“I enjoy the works of Alcaeus of Myteline,” said Walburga, “he was a talented lyricist, if a bit vulgar in some of his verses.”

“Alcaeus?” said Druella, eyes shining. “Then you must have heard of his contemporary, Sappho?”

“I suppose he might have written of her. Sappho of the melody and all that.”

“Yes - he might have - perhaps he considered her a sister.” Druella said.

“I have always read the commentary of their contemporaries as saying they were lovers,” said Walburga.

“Lovers? No, I do not think so. I don’t think Sappho liked men.” Druella said. “She preferred women.”

“As friends,” said Walburga. “I am sure she would not have-”

“And why not?” asked Druella, her voice bordering on desperate. “There is no good reason not to.”

Walburga looked down at her hands, which sat neatly folded in her lap. “Perhaps she was one of the oldest girls in her family, and it was important that she marry an influential man.”

“Isn’t a girl more than her family?” Druella asked quietly.

Walburga frowned. “Is this really suitable conversation?”

“If we don’t talk about it, we never will,” said Druella.

“Do these things need to be talked about?”

“It would be ignorant not to.” Druella held herself tightly. “Walburga, I-”

“In private, please,” said Walburga.

“Just promise me I won’t see you on your cousin’s arm tomorrow.”

Walburga looked away. “I can’t.”

Druella stood up, her eyes unnaturally shiny. “I’ve - I’ve got to go, pardon me, Cassius is waiting, I’m sure.” She shut the door behind her with the characteristic clack of metal on metal.

‘That was enlightening,’ came Tom’s voice in Harry’s head.

‘Druella is… in love with Walburga?’ Harry asked.

‘It would appear she is,’ said Tom. ‘She is not as fortunate as you or I. Walburga will never agree to abandon the dream she was raised to have.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Harry said. ‘Why can’t she go out with Druella?’

‘I think she thinks it’s her responsibility to marry a man. Druella mentioned a cousin - that would be Orion, or one of the Burke boys; her cousin Marius is only a child.’

Harry alternatively slept and gazed at the rolling, sheep-covered hills out of the window for the remaining hours until at last, as the sun was sinking beneath the skyline, the train screeched to a halt at King’s Cross Station.

Abraxas led them to where his parents were waiting on the platform. They were both blonde, with long hair hanging to their shoulders. They could have been twins if Lord Malfoy wasn’t so much taller than his wife, and if he didn’t have a faint covering of stubble on his chin.

“Lord and Lady Malfoy,” said Tom, shaking Lord Malfoy’s hand and kissing Lady Malfoy’s. Harry did the same after a moment’s hesitation.

“Thank you for letting us stay with you,” Harry added.

“It is no trouble,” said Lady Malfoy. “You must be Lord Potter?”

“That’s me!”

Lady Malfoy smiled. “A pleasure to meet you, Lord Potter.”

“I look forward to working with you in the Wizengamot,” added Lord Malfoy.

“Will you be attending the spring International Conference of Wixen?” asked Harry.

“I will be,” said Lord Malfoy. “My wife is hosting some of the spouses of those who will be in the sessions.”

“Then I’ll see you there,” said Harry.

Tom frowned at him but said nothing.

Malfoy Manor was exquisitely decorated, beautiful wallpapers and chandeliers everywhere Harry looked. The room he and Tom stayed in had soft lilac paint on the walls and a mint green bedspread. 

Harry and Tom breakfasted with Abraxas in the Malfoy Heir’s private wing before returning to their borrowed room to dress before the pre-Ball luncheon. They would be with the other adult Lords and Ladies, Abraxas, as Heir Apparent, would also be there, but others, like Cygnus and Walburga Black, would be mingling with the other title-less guests.

Harry had had their robes changed to a darker color, dusky instead of vibrant, although they were still distinctive, they were stately, suitable for the Minister’s Office and the Malfoy Ball. Most of the patterns Tom had asked for had been made smaller, less obvious, so that from a distance the robes just seemed to shimmer in the light. Some had been made bigger, expanded into full sections of the garments.

“I thought you were just having the colours changed!” Tom protested. “I didn’t expect you to-”

“The colours and a few other tweaks, yes. We won’t look like actual pigeons or fourteenth century monarchs, now. Honestly, Tom, your sense of what to wear to big events is dreadful!”

Tom frowned, but when he put his formal robes on, his expression reversed. “Harry! These are wonderful!”

Harry smiled, midway through putting his own robes on. “I’m glad you think so! Now, do these make me look fat?”

He buttoned them up and twirled for Tom to see.

Tom blinked. “Ah… Harry…”

“Is that a yes?” There was a dangerous look in his eyes.

“No! No, of course they don’t!” Tom said quickly.

Harry inspected himself in the mirror. “They do.”

“No, you look wonderful,” Tom reassured him. 

“I look like I’ve got something stuffed up my shirt,” Harry pouted. “It looks horrible and I was happy with how these robes turned out!”

Tom hugged him. “You’re going to be okay. Remember that. Let’s see if anyone’s arrived, shall we?”

Harry nodded. “Okay, I suppose.”

They went down to the parlour connected to the Floo Room, arriving just as the Burke family Flooed in. Lord Caracatus Burke was the Head of the family, but Harry did not recognize any of the others.

Luckily, they introduced themselves.

“You must be the new Lord Potter!” said Lord Burke, shaking Harry’s hand and then Tom’s. “And Lord Slytherin!”

“A pleasure,” said Tom as Harry greeted the younger Burkes.

“Herbert Burke, lovely to meet you,” said Lord Burke’s son. “This is my wife, Belvina, our two sons Clarence and Olivier, and our daughter, Beatrice!”

“Charmed,” said Beatrice, fluttering her eyelashes.

Olivier and Clarence shook Harry’s hand. They were older than Harry and Tom, and significantly older than their younger sister. While she looked about thirteen, the two men could have been in their thirties. On inspection, neither of them had wedding rings. That was odd. It was typical for wizarding youth to marry as soon as they were eligible and out of school, even if they did not have children for some years after that. Lord Burke himself was a prime example of that - the man had to have been at least two hundred!

Not long after the Burkes came the Rowles. Lord Rowle was the first through the Floo, he had graying auburn hair and a curled moustache. With him were four children, who Harry assumed must be Pertinax, Pulcheria, Quintillus, and Claudius, and his unfaithful wife Oenone. She, Harry was shocked to note, had a rounded belly not unlike his own.

Cassiopeia had said Lord Gordian Rowle was infertile, hadn’t she?

Oh Merlin. ‘Then that means…’

A mental ‘yeah’ from Tom confirmed his speculation. Oenone Rowle, who had cheated on her husband (or maybe he had known, it wasn’t clear from Cassiopeia’s note) with not one but two, possibly three men, was pregnant yet again.

It seemed awfully soon for that! All four of the existing Rowle children were under ten; certainly under eleven for not one had attended Hogwarts yet. Pulcheria, the only girl, looked to be the oldest at perhaps eight or maybe nine years old. Her half-brother Quintillus could have been seven, Pertinax five or six, and the boy named Claudius was just a toddler.

“Is that boy havin’ a little baby like mummy is?” asked Claudius.

“I don’t think so, sweetie,” said Gordian Rowle with an apologetic look at Harry, picking up the little boy and setting him on his hip.

“Actually,” said Harry, feeling the heat of the Burke family’s stares on the back of his neck, “I am.”

“Oh! Well, congratulations, then!” said Gordian. “Might I ask your relation to the father? Not to pry, mind.”

Harry looked Lord Gordian Rowle dead in the eye and said “the father is my soulmate and he’s the best I could have asked for.”

He could almost hear Beatrice Burke’s heart breaking.

The luncheon went by quickly. Most people ignored Harry and Tom, the only people to approach them were those they already knew, like Orion Black, who was there with his father, Lord Arcturus Black, who had been Lord of the House of Black ever since his own father Sirius decided he did not want the title, who Harry was supposed to the blackmailing today, and Abraxas Malfoy, who was there with his parents, Lord and Lady Malfoy. Since only Lords, Ladies, and Heirs Apparent were invited, Harry was able to escape the judgemental gazes of Phineas and Charlus Potter for an hour.

Soon, though, the time came that the Ball officially started, and the attendants of the private luncheon joined those who had not been invited in an enormous ballroom. It was at least as big as the venues Grindelwald liked to hold his rallies in.

“Wow,” Harry whispered to Tom, “this is huge.”

“I’m sure you have one just as big in one of your properties,” Tom replied. “I know I do, when I finally get around to having Slytherin Castle repared.”

“Hold on. Castle?”

Tom nodded. “Yes, it’s ancient and needs a lot of work, but it is a castle.”

Harry stared, wide-eyed. “Wow.”

Tom shrugged. “Slytherin was a pretty influential wizard way back then.”

Harry found Arcturus Black after a few dances, during which most of the people who saw him tried to hide the fact that they were discussing him. He danced with Tom, and Walburga, who had indeed arrived on the arm of her cousin, and Harry’s friend Orion Black - Druella, he was pretty sure, had left the room in tears - and Orion, who happily told him that his and Walburga’s marriage contract had been signed, and a little girl called Meissa Black who Orion introduced as his sister. She really was tiny, she looked younger than Pertinax Rowle, who, now Harry thought about it, was actually her half-brother.

“I want the Prophet,” he said once he had Arcturus in a darkened corner.

Arcurus Black raised one eyebrow. “And what are you willing to pay me for it?”

“I’m willing to not share your secrets,” Harry said, voice cold.

“What secrets of mine could you have?” sneered Arcturus, the mask of a friendly, middle-aged man gone.

“Many,” said Harry flippantly, “like your three sons. Most people don’t know that you have three, do they?”

Arcturus blinked. “You’re - you’re -”

“Yes.”

“Fine. I’ll owl the paperwork to you and alert the Daily Prophet’s management.”

“That doesn’t work for me,” said Harry flatly. “I want proof of ownership transferred to me by the end of tonight.”

“But - but the Ball!”

“Too bad,” sneered Harry. “Your choice, but choose wisely.”

Arcturus gulped. “All right, I’ll do it! You’ll have it this evening, I promise!”

True to his word, Arcurus passed a certificate of ownership to Harry that very night, just as Harry was restless and ready to leave. His legs hurt and his back hurt and he’d done what he had come for.

Tom, however, was not ready to go. Harry found him talking to the Minister about the Minister’s work, a charming smile plastered on his face.

Harry leaned into Tom. ‘I want to go,’ he said through their mind link.

‘I’m not ready,’ replied Tom. Out loud, he said, “Minister, meet my fiance, Lord Hadrian Potter. He is my soulmate and is expecting my child.”

“Remarkable!” exclaimed the Minister. “The last pair of soulmates I can remember were Cicero and Aurelias Shacklebolt almost a hundred years ago - congratulations to the two of you! You are honored indeed by this gift of magic.”

Tom socialized with Ministry workers and other high-up people for another three hours before he finally agreed to go home. He had Professor Slughorn, who was there with his parents Ursa and Flavius, Aunt Fairuza and Uncle Julius, and cousins Christine and Sylvester, take them back to Hogwarts through the Floo.

When they finally arrived back at their dorms, Harry collapsed onto the first bed he saw and was asleep within minutes.


	18. Aftermaths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of the Time Ball.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back!

“Remind me never to stand for that long again,” said Harry the next morning.

“It wasn’t that bad,” protested Tom, wrapping his arm around him. Harry gave a flat stare.

“Yes, it was.”

Tom looked down. “Well - I’m sure it’ll be easier next time.”

Harry wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Next time? There won’t be a next time.”

“Harry…” Tom looked pleading. “You know how much I want to go into politics…”

“Politics,” sneered Harry, “I don’t know how you stand it.”

“You stand it as well,” Tom said. “But - yes. Please, Harry? It’ll be better for my career if you come to these events with me. And it is rather good to impress people with tangible evidence of the talent even magic itself accepts!” He moved his hand to Harry’s bump.

Harry recoiled. “Our child is not a tool!”

“Of course not!”

But Harry wasn’t calmed by that. “Our child, Tom! Our baby! You realize it’s real, right? You realize there’s an actual baby - one that exists for more than just to boost your ego!”

“I didn’t ask for it,” Tom muttered.

“Neither did I!” Harry burst out. “But it exists, and it’s going to be here, and we’re going to appreciate every second of it, you hear me! How dare you - how dare you say such a thing! As if it’s a bad thing!”

“I didn’t mean you to hear that Harry I’m sorry-”

“Sorry?” Harry hissed, his voice slipping into Parseltongue. “Sorry? Sorry that you said it, or sorry that I heard it? I don’t believe it! Actually, I do, although I sorely wish I didn’t! You are so foul, Tom Riddle! I am carrying your child! In my body! I’m fucking pregnant with your fucking child, you’re acting like it’s some great burden I forced on you, it’s my damn body! My health that’s down the drain now that your little thing is taking everything I have! You can’t go a week without starting some fight - I - I - can’t you be nicer? Why? I just want - I just -” Harry breathed hard.

“Harry, I know you’re upset, I know you’re emotional right now, your hormones are running wild-”

Harry grit his teeth, tears slipping down his cheeks. “Don’t you dare dismiss my feelings as hormones!”

“That’s why you’re having a heightened emotional reaction, though!”

“You - you bastard! You utter bastard!” Harry pushed himself to his feet and stormed off. Tom followed him down the first few steps, but Harry whipped his head around. “Don’t you dare follow me after what you’ve said!”

Harry hid in a darkened corner of the Slytherin common room, called for his oldest friend, and put up a Silencing Charm to hide the sound of his crying.

Sure enough, Asmodeus heard his call. “Harry,” he hissed, “you are distressed.”

“It’s Tom,” said Harry. “He’s a fucking bastard.”

“Bit crass, but true,” Asmodeus mused. “Why do you think I have stopped wanting to go about on your person?”

Harry looked at his snake. “Not that kind of fucking, Asmo, honestly… oh, you love the mice in this castle. Bet you’ve been over by the Hufflepuff dorms eating the mice trying to get into the kitchens.”

“Guilty as charged,” hissed Asmodeus, flicking his tail. “Harry, human, do you want me to bite the Tom human?”

“No!” said Harry. “You can’t. Don’t. I’m annoyed with him but I’ll be very ill if you do and I don’t - I don’t hate him. Not really.”

“If you change your mind, my fangs are at your disposal,” Asmodeus informed him.

“Thanks, Asmo.” Harry gave a watery chuckle. “But… not right now. I’m okay right now.”

“You do not seem okay, and this Tom was the cause of it, no?”

“It’s… it’s complicated,” Harry sighed. “I’m annoyed with him, and he’s annoyed with me, and the baby… it’s complicated.”

“The hatchling! Is the hatchling all right?” Asmodeus climbed onto Harry’s belly and circled it, tasting the air with his tongue.

“Yeah, the baby… uh, hatchling is fine. It’s just, people don’t normally, um, mate the first time they meet.”

“Humans are strange.” declared Asmodeus. “Why meet so many others if you are not going to mate with suitable ones?”

“I guess… people are different from snakes. We aren’t snakes. We’re a social species.”

“A silly species, more like,” said Asmodeus. “If you ask me, you made a wise choice, mating with that Tom the first time you saw him, even if he has subsequently proven a poor father. You do not need him to raise a fine hatchling.”

Harry gave a lopsided grin. “Thanks, Asmo. But I kind of do. I don’t want to… I don’t want to do this on my own, and I’m scared and I don’t think I can do it at all no matter how many people help me, I’m going to be a pretty rotten dad myself.”

“You will be a wonderful father! Do not say things like that, my Harry human! They are lies! You are the best human I have ever met!”

Harry brought his hand to his abdomen, under his shirt. “I just hope I don’t let this little one down too badly.”

“You won’t,” said Asmodeus. “Hatchling, if you are listening, your father is the best wizard who ever lived, and you are a lucky hatchling. Be nice in your flesh-egg, for your flesh-egg is part of your father and I am obliged to protect him.”

“Flesh egg?” Harry asked, amusement taking the edge off the hurricane of negative emotions.

Asmodeus bobbed his head. “You do have a flesh egg. Look how it sticks out, in the shape of the side of an egg? Every day the egg grows larger.”

“Asmo… that’s not an egg, it’s my stomach and I’m… not fat, am I?”

“Harry, human, you don’t need me to tell you that you are becoming fat with hatchling. When you lay your hatchling, you will not be engorged anymore. It is the same with breeding snakes. And me when I eat a big meal. You haven’t eaten a big meal recently, though. You don’t eat much nowadays.”

Harry drew his knees in as far as they would go, and put his head in his hands. The verdict had been laid down. Even his snake thought he was fat.

Oh, Merlin. Even his snake thought he was fat. And Tom, Tom probably hated him after his outburst earlier. Swamped in misery, Harry began to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!   
> -ivory

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Remember, comments and kudos are appreciated and may make me write faster...  
> -ivory


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